• LWD@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    The dot com bubble made the Internet explode, sure, but corporate sites weren’t the entire internet back then. There were far more niche sites, web rings, forums, etc…

    • dan@upvote.au
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      1 month ago

      The reason I mentioned the dot com bubble is because a lot of the companies back then failed because they couldn’t figure out a sustainable business model. It was mostly hype-driven with the idea of getting users first, then figuring out monetization later.

      That’s why we have ad-supported sites today. It was the main business model that was the most sustainable.

      There were a lot of small sites, sure, but a lot of them were hosted on services with no real business model. Even back then, not a lot of people self-hosted.

      • LWD@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        That’s a fair thing to bring up. I think your point went over my head, because I was mostly reminiscing about how the less capital-oriented parts of the internet were relatively pleasant before companies like Facebook came along and encouraged them all (with their newly acquired capital) to jump into the big centralized areas.