After mentioning the Wayback Machine in my previous entry, I’ve spent an hour or so looking up some of the most popular sites of today. Let’s open up the door, climb in the old internet time machine and check out these 10 sites. The links below will take you to the archived pages so you can browse around yourself.

1. Google.comDecember 2, 1998. Look at that, you can get Google updates monthly.

2. Yahoo.comOctober 17, 1996. Click here to see their old Yahooligan page. :)

3. YoutubeApril 28, 2005. Not too bad looking, but was it targeting daters?

4. FacebookAugust 6, 2005. Welcome to TheFacebook. :)

5. MSNOctober 22, 1996. Hmmm, not what I expected.

6. Myspace - October 4, 2003. A place for friends.

7. WikipediaJuly 27, 2001. My how you’ve changed.

8. Blogger - October 12, 1999. I didn’t realize Blogger has been around for so long.

9. CNNAugust 15, 2000. Interesting President Clinton & Democratic Convention stories.

10. ESPNDecember 3, 1998. Not too bad of a look, considering it was 1998. Dimaggio out of his coma.

I hope you’ve enjoyed killing some time checking out these pages. It’s always interesting to see where some of the top sites started out before blowing up. Feel free to share any sites that you find that are interesting. I can even add them to the list.

Related posts:

  1. Evolution of 6 Popular Social Network Sites – Part 2
  2. Evolution of 6 Popular Social Network Sites: Part 1
  3. ESPN.com 1998 to 2000 – Fun With the Wayback Machine
  4. Tap Into The Internet Archive – Free Audio, Video, the Wayback Machine and More
  5. Dead Wrestler of the Week – A Tribute by Deadspin.com

View Comments to “10 Popular Sites – How They Once Looked”

  1. Kevin says:

    wow.. nice collection.. blogger.com remind me that it was originally from pyra labs…by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan

  2. Brian says:

    Thanks Kevin. I had no clue Blogger was that old. Luckily, they’ve improved their design a bit. :) Thanks for stopping by.

  3. Srikanth AD says:

    Nice collection and a creative post

  4. Brian says:

    Thanks Srikanth, it started out with me just checking a bunch of sites out, then i just decided to post them. Glad you enjoy.

  5. FlyAtTheThigh says:

    The old ESPN setup is easier to use than the new one.

  6. Brian says:

    No doubt, good point Fly. :)

  7. Steve says:

    If y'all liked these, check out the internet archive (http://www.archive.org). Put in a site and it gives you a list of dates and if you're lucky you'll get to see what the site looked like on that date. It's not brilliantly reliable but it did show me some of the appalling layouts my own site used to use!

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