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I remembered when I was in Secondary 1 or 2, my dad bought a new computer for me and together with a loud and obnoxious 56k dial-up modem, I was able to surf the internet! This got me thinking about how the evolution and trends of the internet has influenced and changed me.

Those were the days where Web 1.0 existed. Most sites only have a one way flow of information and contain ‘read-only’ materials for the user, like a linear model of information transfer. None of the websites back then were interactive.

Then, mIRC popped out. It was immediately well received and was immensely popular back then. mIRC was one of the first few free of charge chat services that was available on the internet. It is a forum that provides an exchange of opinions and information with different channels where people can go to according to their interests or hobbies. This is also an avenue for one to widen social network, to troll or being preyed on by online sexual predators!

Another feature is that users are able to share files online. Users are able to download songs, files, software for free. Of course, it was pretty much like that of Napster where it was an online music peer to peer files sharing service which later was shut down due to massive copyright issues. Going back to mIRC, I was also able to transfer files and pictures and that was before the rise of MSN messenger.

Since 2004, the term Web 2.0 is used to describe the internet the way it is today. Some of the key attributes associated with Web 2.0 includes social networks like Friendster, Facebook, other sites like YouTube, personal webpages like Blogger. These sites include interactivity with other users, opinion sharing, etc and can be seen to be user friendly and dynamic in many ways.

I recalled Friendster was very popular back then where people are able to view one and another profile and adding each other as friends. “Eh, help me write a testimonial on my Friendster!” was very popular among my group of friends and all of us competed to see who has the most friends, nicest homepage etc. (don’t judge me; I was still in Secondary school). Then, came about Myspace which wasn’t so popular in Singapore.

Up came Facebook and many people ditch Friendster to jump onboard Facebook’s bandwagon. Since then, Facebook has sky rocketed into the world’s most accessed website and has now over 500 million active users. Status updating, posting pictures, tagging pictures has all became a necessity for users nowadays.

YouTube, a video-sharing websites has also been very well received by web users. (Though there is much criticism over the overly commercialized YouTube now). Blogging has also become a craze of recent times. (That’s why I’m doing this entry? Duh…) Many people also earn their living through blogging or making YouTube videos. These social media experts were born due to the change in the way of internet consumption.

Of course there are many other trending websites that are gen Z favorites.

So what is Web 3.0? Also known as the semantic web, it is a pretty much speculated thing, One can only predict what it will consists of but none are sure of it.

Time will only tell what is to come.

FACEBOOK TIME!