15 WEBSITES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

John Naughton The Observer´s Net specialist charts the web's early life and tells the story of the 15 most influential websites to date:


1. eBay.com

Founded: Pierre Omidyar, 1995, US
Users: 168m
An auction and shopping site


2. wikipedia.com

Founded: Jimmy Wales, 2001, US
Users: 912,000 visits per day
An online encyclopaedia


3. napster.com

Founded: Shawn Fanning, 1999, US
Users: 500,000 paying subscribers
A file sharing site


4. youtube.com

Founded: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, 2005, US
Users: 100m clips watched a day
A video sharing site


5. blogger.com

Founded: Evan Williams, 1999, US
Users: 18.5m unique visitors
The weblog publishing system that you have right now in your creen.


6. friendsreunited.com

Founded: Steve and Julie Pankhurst, 1999, UK
Users: 15m
A school reunion site


7. drudgereport.com

Founded: Matt Drudge, 1994, US
Users: 8-10m page views per day
A conservative news site

8. myspace.com

Founded: Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, 2003, US
Users: 100m
A social networking site owned by News Corporation.


9. amazon.com

Founded: Jeff Bezos, 1994, US
Users: More than 35m customers in over 250 countries
An online retailer, primarily of books, CDs and DVDs


10. slashdot.org

Founded: Rob Malda, 1997, US
Users: 5.5m per month
A technology news website and internet forum


11. salon.com

Founded: David Talbot, 1995, US
Users: Between 2.5 and 3.5m unique visitors per month
An online magazine and media company


12. craigslist.org

Founded: Craig Newmark, 1995, US
Users: 4bn page views per month
A centralised network of online urban communities, featuring free classified advertisements and forums


13. google.com

Founded: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, 1998, US
Users: A billion search requests per day
A search engine and media corporation


14. yahoo.com

Founded: David Filo and JerryYang, 1994, US
Users: 400m
An Internet portal and media corporation


15. easyjet.com

Founded: Stelios
Haji-Ioannou, 1995, UK
Users: 30m passengers last year
A budget airline website.

Well, in my own list I will add a few more that I use all the time:

expedia.com
nytimes.com
media.guardian.co.uk
buzzmachine.com

Tell us about your favorites.