The internet has a multitude of flash in the pan moments, be it a meme or full fledged company, but its surprising how many of the long forgotten websites are still around and working.
MySpace, whose logo pops and fades on a balloon in the opening of the popular tech TV show Silicon Valley, is actually still around. Not only does MySpace still work, its still updated with the news of the day.
MySpace is now less a social networking site these days and more a mix of streaming music and videos. According to SF Gate its listed as 1,745 of the sites in the US in traffic on Alexa.
Napster is also still going, but instead of a the rip and run service it once was for free music via the MP3, it is now a subscription based music service. Napster was shut down after a lawsuit led by Metallica saw the site’s original player service shuttered.
Today on Napster? The once rip and run MP3 service that was sued into obscurity by Metallica has been updated since its rouge heyday and is now an honest, monthly charging, streaming service akin to Spotify
Hot or Not: Still exists, and you can still up rate or down rate someone based on their photo, but its tweaked since being bought by a Russian dating company, and now has features that look much like Tinder (see red flaming logo)
Now Napster is what Spotify is. Both charge for streaming service, both go for $9.99 a month, only the former has a whopping 83 million paid subscribers monthly and the latter has just 3 million.
Hot or Not, the once super popular site that was the brain child of two UC Berkeley students in 2000 was designed to rate people’s photos on their ‘hotness’ in a scale of 1 to 10.
However, it did have the option of communication between two people who liked each other’s photos, just like today’s typical online dating interfaces.
Hot or Not was purchased by Russian dating service Badoo in 2012, according to SF Gate.
It ditched the 1 to 10 scale for something akin to a Tinder like ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ format that endures on its website. It even has a similar flaming mobile app icon.
Citysearch is another site that has long been eclipsed by Yelp since 2010. But it is still up and running.
The company was founded in 1995 where locals could go to for recommendations on various businesses.
Yelp essentially pushed out Citysearch to the far-reaching corners of the internet’s traffic ranking. The reviews are all labeled as ‘Posted over a year ago,’ with its traffic languishing all the way down in rankings at 18,427 in traffic on Alexa.
Before there was Google Maps on your phones, there was MapQuest. People would literally print out their map and driving directions before heading out on the road.
Citysearch is now like a haunted abyss of reviews of days past- but its still up and functioning
MySpace has changed over the years and is now less a social networking site and more a mix of music, news and videos
Mapquest, where you would once go to print out your travel itinerary is still functioning, but with GoogleMaps and AppleMaps on your phones telling you how to get there… printing something just feels like a waste of paper
The company predates the World Wide Web, to back in the 1960’s when it printed physical maps.
It was a booming website in the mid-2000s and AOL bought it for an eye-watering $1billion in 1999, before it became obsolete with apps on phones like Google and Apple Maps.
None-the-less you can still plan your trip via Mapquests website. And it ranks fairly high still considering how far the web has come, raking at 537th in US traffic on Alexa.
In a time long ago, when the internet was starting to become a household commodity, in the mid 1990s, there was Netscape Navigator. It was the first web browser you used.
It was wildly popular for a short time and was in a heated war for users with Micorosoft’s Internet Explorer. It was sold to AOL for $4.2billion in 1998.
However, as is with the internet Microsoft’s bundling advantage with its operating system was too great to compete.
In 2007 AOL retired the browser, but it still exists as a plain website with a search engine powered by Bing.