The Dot-Com Boom and Bust


-1998-1999: Low-interest rates facilitated the Dot-Com Bubble
-Dot-Com Bubble: the founding of a group of new Internet-based companies commonly referred to as dot-coms.

-2000: The Dot-Com Bubble Bursts

-2001: In the aftermath, telecommunications companies had a great deal of overcapacity as many Internet business clients went broke. Plus much investment in local cell infrastructure kept connectivity charges low.

-2002: The beginning of Web 2.0
-Suggests a new version of the World Wide Web
-Changes in the ways software developers and end-users utilize the web
-This combination of more user-created or edited content, and easy means of sharing content, such as video embedding, has led to many sites with a typical "Web 2.0" feel.

File Sharing + Digital Music


- MP3.com had a quick search engine where you could search through uploaded MP3s
- But it would usually turn up broken links
- Shawn Fanning wanted to develop a better system to share such things

- Instead of uploading it to one place, people would share it through Peer-to-peer networking
- With the program, you would search for the file and if someone had it, then you could download it from them
- Other programs soon followed the same idea (Kazaa, Limewire, etc.)
- Regulations and copyright issues would immediately follow (i.e. Metallica) and cause a debate that lasts til today.

Kazaa