Milestones in the History of Geo-Locative Services

I've been recently researching the history of location-based services (LBS) and locative media. I previously blogged about the definition, terminology, forms, and examples of these, but I have not examined their origins.

As with much of digital media, it is surprising how poorly this history is documented. Wikipedia remains the best, and frequently the only, source of historical information, but at times it makes contradictory or unsupported claims (such as "the first X"). I tried to find at least a couple sources for the history below.

Below, I compiled a list of key milestones in the innovations that made consumer locative media and LBS possible. The focus is on consumer applications, particularly ones related to place or geo-targetted information.

Essentially, five streams of innovation needed to come together to make geo-locative services possible:

1. Geo-positioning technology
2. Internet
3. Mobile communications and computing
4. Digital mapping and geocontent
5. Graphical interface and interaction design

In compiling this list, I was surprised at the degree to which innovations arose from around the world. I've included the countries of origins, but if not stated it is the U.S.

I don't go back to the invention of the map, telephone, or the concept of the computer, but pick it up as the technologies begin to converge...

• 1940 to 1980: Computers introduced and gradually became smaller, smarter, faster, cheaper and easy to use - leading to the personal computer revolution of 1980s (Computer History Museum)
• 1950 to 1960: augmented reality (Wikipedia) and RFID technology begun (Landt)
• 1960: Canadian government in Ottawa developed first operational computer Geographic Information System (Wikipedia)
• 1965 to 1968: Douglas Engelbart at Stanford Research Institute develops and presents the first working computer with graphical user interface elements (Britannica & Utah State U.)
• 1969: ARPAnet launched, first multiple site computer network, precursor to Internet (Webopedia)
• 1970 to 1980s:  Touchscreen devices developed & perfected (Bill Buxton)
• April 3, 1973: Motorola executive made first ever cell-phone call (to competitor Bell Labs) (CNN)
• February 22, 1978: First GPS (Navstar) satellite launched, owned, and operated only for U.S. military; 24 satellites would be launched before network completed in 1993 (Wikipedia)
• 1980 to 1990: RFID became commercially mainstream (Landt)
• 1981 to 1984: First laptop and tablet computers launched (Wikipedia)
• 1984: Apple's Macintosh personal computer first affordable computer with graphical user interface; it sells very well and convinces people of merits of GUI (Britannica
• 1986: One of first wireless data technologies launched by Sweden's Ericsson(Wireless Week)
• 1988: Canadian company, BlackBerry (formerly Research in Motion), was first North American company to develop wireless data technology (CBC)
• 1989: World's first commercial, handheld GPS receiver, Magellan's NAV 1000, released (Time)
• Christmas 1990: Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau brought World Wide Web to life from CERN, Switzerland (Scientific American)
• 1991: Internet (then in form of NSFNET) made available for commercial use (Computer History Museum)
• June 1993: One of first online, static maps launched by Xerox PARC (Wikipedia)
• 1994: Bluetooth, international standard for short-distance wireless data transmission, invented by Ericsson (Mashable)
• August 16, 1994: IBM & BellSouth released world's first smartphone and first phone with a touchscreen, Simon Personal Communicator; it had cellphone, calendar, note pad, game, etc. and optional memory card for maps, camera, music (although it wasn't called smartphone as term not used until 1997 with Ericsson's GS 88 Penelope) (Wikipedia & Bloomberg)
• 1995: First built-in GPS device, GuideStar, offerred in production vehicle, GM's Oldsmobile Eighty Eight (PCMag)
• 1996: U.S. Federal Communication Commission requires all cellphones to pinpoint users for emergency response, drastically increasing ubiquity of locative technology
• February 5, 1996: First consumer-focused online, interactive map launched by MapQuest (AOL & About.com)
• 1997: Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers published WiFi standard; companies soon launched WiFi enabled products (Economist)
• July 1997 - U.K.'s Trafficmaster released world's first live traffic information available via GSM cellphone (using own positioning method, not GPS); as first killer app of telematic devices it drove demand (Trafficmaster & Communications Today)
• 1998: Standards published to enable mobile Internet browsing, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) (eHow); in 2000 I developed one of Canada's first WAP sites for movie listings & reviews
• 1999: Headmap Manifesto published by Ben Russelll; it presented influential vision of ubiquitous & locative technology (Technoccult)
• 1999: Weather Channel launched possibly first platform-independent consumer LBS; in Jan. 2013 their app surpassed 100 million downloads (Weather Channel)
• February 22, 1999: Japan's answer to WAP released, i-mode gained international popularity, but now only used in parts of Asia (Telegraph)
• May 1999: Palm VII released in U.S. and has LBS capability via zip codes positioning (Navipedia)
• June 1999: World's first cellphone with GPS functionality when Japan's Seiko Epson introduced 290g Locatio, also possibly world's first LBS as included locative mapping & wayfinding, geo-targetted weather forecasts, and proximal restaurants, hotels, & points of interest (Time/CNN)
• October 1999: Europe's first phone with GPS and likely first ever proximal "friend finder" feature when Finnish company Benefon released “Esc!”(Global Positioning & Navigation News, 1999, vol. 9, iss. 1)
• Late 1999: After innovations in paging technology, BlackBerry released BlackBerry 850 Wireless Handheld; the widely-successful "Crackberry" combined e-mail, organizing features, wireless data network, & QWERTY keyboard (a rarity) (CBC)
• 2000: Dodgeball launched, early geo-social service and arguably first to reach large scale popularity, users texted their location to discover nearby friends & venues (Wikipedia)
• May 2, 2000: American government allowed everyone complete, precise access to GPS service
• May 3, 2000: First geocache hidden, in wilderness of Oregon by Dave Ulmer who then invited people online to find it via GPS devices (Geocaching.com)
• October 2000: Nokia, Motorola, & Ericsson founded "Location Interoperability Forum" to spur development of LBS (Global Positioning & Navigation News, vol 10, 20 & 22 )
• 2001: First cellphone with GPS in U.S. released, Samsung's SPH N300 in Rhode Island (Wireless Insider, vol. 2, iss. 38)
• November 1, 2001: "Can You See Me Now," a mixed/alternative reality game first played in Sheffield, UK - one of first such games to use online location tracking (Blast Theory)
• 2002: Dutch company TomTom released their first navigation product for PDAs; Navigator was one of first affordable portable (and suitable for in-car) GPS devices (TomTom)
• June 2002: One billion mobile phone users worldwide (eMarketer)
• June 2002: 200 companies joined to form "Open Mobile Alliance" to consolidate standards for mobile development (OMA)
• August 2002: Wherify Wireless made children's watches with GPS for parent to track kids (BBC)
• Fall 2002: First doctoral dissertation about LBS published in ProQuest (leading dissertation publisher), "Discovery and adaptation for LBS" by Todd Hodes, Berkeley, Computer Science
• 2003: One of the first locative history projects; launched in Toronto [murmur] collected oral histories of places and via unique phone numbers & plaques, people could use mobiles to hear stories of place in situ, project spread across Canada, Ireland, Australia, Scotland, U.S. & Brazil (murmur)
• 2003: Japanese first to use smartphones to scan QR codes to receive online content; QR codes were invented for Japanese auto industry in 1994 (Wikipeida)
• July 2003: Locative media term coined by Karlis Kalnins for Latvian workshop (Leonardo)
• June 2004: One of first locative art projects presented; Christian Nold's London UK based project Bio Mapping used galvanic skin response & GPS to map people's emotional response to specific locations (Observer)
• July 2004: I Love Bees, one of most popular, early alternative reality games with locative elements (e.g. GPS) begun (Wikipedia)
• August 9, 2004: OpenStreetMap, open-source global online mapping project started in U.K. (OpenStreetMap)
• August 16, 2004: Plazes released, German company pioneered and popularized geo-social networking (Wikipedia)
• April 8, 2005: HousingMaps.com launched, first Google Map mash-up (before their API released) using Craigslist housing listings; it allowed people to search for housing via online map (Programmable Web)
• May 2005: Chicagocrime.org launched, crime data mash-up with Google Maps (Holovaty)
• June 29, 2005: Where Conference (formerly "Where 2.0") convened, arguably leading conference in this sector (though SXSW is close)
• June 28, 2005: Google released Google Earth, enabled widespread access to satellite imagery (Google)
• June 29, 2005: Google released API for Google Maps, spurred innovative online map mash-ups (Google)
• November 2005: Google released Maps for Mobile (Google)
• November 2005: Wikipedia page created for locative media
• Late 2005: GeoNames.org launched; a wiki gazetteer based in Switzerland with over 10 million place names in database - this leading source of free geocoded data enables many geo-services
• 2006: Labs set up to examine mobile and locative technologies through art and research (both called "Mobile Experience Lab" and both appear to have started in 2006) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ontario College of Art and Design University
• Feburary 2006: Finnish company, Nokia, first company to offer Near Field Communications capable mobile, 6131 (NearFieldCommunication.org)
• May 18, 2007: Russia made its satellite navigation system, GLONASS, freely available; launched in 1970s for military use, it's only alternative to GPS - until Europeans complete Galileo in 2019 (Wikipedia)
• June 1, 2007: Busted by LBS - Plazes CEO, Felix Petersen, called in sick to one conference then checked-in on to another on his geosocial app, but got caught (TechCrunch)
• June 29, 2007: Many Asian smartphones already had built-in accelerometers for positioning & navigation, but iPhone introduced it to Western users (CNET)
• September 25, 2007: First issue of Journal of Location Based Services
• August 2, 2007: Vancouver based SciFi author William Gibson wrote "Spook Country" featuring locative art prominently (Boston Globe)
• December 2007: Dopplr launched and pioneered social navigation and geosocial networking; based in UK & Finland, it was bought by Nokia to wither (Guardian)
• January 2008: Kenya's post-election violence prompted volunteers to map reports of violence received via mobile users, later they created Ushahidi, open-source platform for similar crisis mapping (Ushahidi)
• 2008: First doctoral dissertation on locative media published in ProQuest, "A brief history of the future of urban computing and locative media" by Anne Galloway, Carleton University, Ottawa
• July 10, 2008: Apple launched App Store to promote apps; although first for mobile apps and they revolutionized app distribution, the app directory concept existed years before, such as Toronto-based Tucows' listings of freeware/shareware launched in 1993 (Wikipedia)
• September 23, 2008: Webby awards announced new category for "best use of GPS or location technology"; first awarded to Adidas Marathon Run Tracker and People's Voice award to Palringo Local (Webby)
• August 28, 2008: Flickr introduced ability to geocode photos by placing them on a map, combined with reading geocodes automatically taken by mobile device cameras; within 1 day over a million photos are geocoded, eventually leading Flickr (founded in Canada) to become one of largest sources of georeferenced content (Flickr)
• March 14, 2009: Foursquare launched at SXSW conference, resulting hype helped it become arguably most popular LBS (PC Mag)
• June 19, 2009: Augmented reality browser, Layar, launched and freely available, popularizing A.R. apps (TechCrunch & Layar)
• End of 2009: Locative apps gained ubiquity as five of top ten apps in Germany, U.K., and France centered on location or navigation (Navipedia)
• 2010: Proclaimed "year of location" after high-profile launch & popularity of many LBS
• January 12, 2010: Earthquake in Haiti, triggered global efforts to map problem areas via web-platform Ushahidi and SMS updates from Haitians, resulting crisis-map aids relief workers and demonstrated potential of such technology (National Geographic)
• February 2010: Privacy concerns of public check-ins brought to attention with launch of Dutch website, Please Rob Me; it scrubs Foursquare & Twitter to determine empty houses (Telegraph)
• April 3, 2010: Tablets finally caught on with the release of Apple's iPad (TechRadar)
• June 4, 2010: China banned Foursquare after virtual Tiananmen Square protests (Telegraph)
• June 24, 2010: Gyroscopes to orient devices were common in consumer electronics (e.g., Wii) and digital cameras, but it was Apple iPhone 4 to include in mobiles and soon all mobiles had them (EETimes)
• July 2010: Having installed Fourquare a month prior, I received notice of nearby special supposedly of interest to me, for a plus-sized women's clothing store (I'm not a plus-sized woman); location-based advertising has a long way to go - Luckily, a fellow Torontonian founded Location Based Marketing Association shortly thereafter
• December 2010: "Mother of all geofencing pattents" awarded to Where after applying for it in 2005. Geofences are gaining popularity for geo-targetted marketing campaigns, child and friend tracking, and proximal alerts. (TechCrunch)
• January 2011: 41% of Canadian smartphone owners had a Blackberry (Ipsos)
• May 2011: X-Men First Class film promoted with "smart posters" that once tapped with a suitable mobile device activate online content; first U.K. marketing campaign to use this tech (Proxama)
• November 2011: Google released indoor maps for mobiles (Google)
• January 2012: 34% of Canadians owned a smartphone (33% are Blackberries, 28% Apple, 31% Android); 10% owned a tablet (Ipsos)
• February 2012: 74% of US smartphone owners accessed location-based info (Pew)
• May 2012: Groupon launched LBS for users to see nearby deals (PCMag)
• Spring 2012: Canadians spent 2.8 hours per day on smartphones, 2.4 hours on tablets (Ipsos)
• April 2012: 55% of US adults accessed Internet on mobile; almost double from 2009 (Pew)
• June 2012: Foursquare had 2 billion check-ins and 20 million users (CNET)
• August 2012: Indoor positioning = last holy grail. Nokia, Samsung, & Sony joined forces to make indoor locative technology a reality through their In-Location Alliance (Computer World)
• August 13, 2012: Google bought travel publisher Frommers for $25 million, having previously bought restaurant reviewer Zagat in 2011 (Forbes)
• December 2012: 87% of U.S. adults had cellphone, 45% had smartphone (Pew)
• February 2012: China had one billion mobile users, first country to reach this level (Forbes)
• March 15, 2012: In-car GPS device instructed Glen Farrelly to drive onto non-existent road and into active volcano in Hawaii; Glen used own judgement & survived (unlike others)
• September 2012: One billion smartphones used globally (Bloomberg)
• January 2013: 31% of US adults owned a tablet (Pew)
• February 1, 2013: Mobile app Path fined $800,000 for privacy violations; it was also found that Path shared users' locations even when users opted out of this (NY Times)
• February 3, 2013: After waiting a few weeks for my invitation to Ingress, Google's new location-based game for mobiles, I finally got in. A scifi narrative encouraged people to explore their world and join a global fight, using app's locative interface. (TechCrunch) Hyped as first game with potential to make location-based games (aka alternative reality) mainstream.
• February 11, 2013: For the first time in Canada, I noticed a "smart poster" - for a Toronto production of The Wizard of Oz. I tapped my Nexus smartphone to the poster and instantly got ta page for ticket info. Although, this technology worked much more quickly and easily than scanning a QR code, the resulting page I received was generic and boring - demonstrating that even if the tech functions the campaign strategy and content execution must also work.

This list is a simplified account and is by no means definitive. And, considering how poorly documented the history of this sector is, some of these details cannot be considered infallible.

All this considered, I could really use some help verifying, correcting, and expanding this list - so please leave any suggestions below.

Top 20 Most Important Developments of the Internet

The Internet Society is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. They are a global organization devoted to maintaining a free, open, accessible, and viable Internet.

I've recently blogged about the Internet Society's call for people to submit ideas for a new Internet Hall of Fame they are establishing.

Internet Society is also marking their anniversary with a listing of what people think are the 20 most significant developments in the history of the Internet, whether an innovation, event, or product.

So I figured I would offer my top 20. I tried to combine technological inventions, commercial product launches, and events that have shaped the Internet.  I've linked to Wikipedia (#16) for more information on the topics.

Top 20 Internet Developments:

1. ARPANET - the military research network of the 1960s that became the Internet
2. Hypertext - interlinking of digital text and media, predicted by Vannevar Bush in the 1940s, developed by Ted Nelson and Douglas Engelbart in the 1960s
3. Email - invented in the 1970s and is the bedrock of Internet-based communications (honourable mention to Hotmail for making email more accessible in 1996 by offering the first free web-based email service) 
4. Domain Name System (DNS) -  gives us the ability to use plain language web addresses
5. MUDs (Multi-User Dungeon/Domain) - the first form of networked games, developed in the late 1970s and is the precursor to modern forms of collaborative and online gaming such as Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) 
6. Archie - first Internet search engine (for FTP sites), developed at McGill University in 1990
7. World Wide Web (WWW) - Tim Berners-Lee creates the ultimate digital medium in 1991
8. Mosaic - user-friendly browser launched in 1993 that accelerated the popularity of the Web by displaying images and text together
9. Netscape's Initial Public Offering - the browser's phenomenal IPO propelled Internet development and usage
10. Secure Socket Layers - Netscape's encryption system, developed in the mid 1990s, helped make the web secure enough to allow e-commerce and e-banking to flourish
11. Travelocity - one of the first victims of e-business were travel agencies (who books in person anymore?) and Travelocity, which launched to consumers in the mid 1980s via CompuServe, was one of the first online travel booking sites
12. Internet Movie Database (IMDB) - launched first on USENET in 1990, IMDB was one of the first websites to popularize user-generated content, in the form of user ratings and reviews, thus being Web 2.0 years before the concept was created (honourable mention to Writing.com for also being one of the first UGC sites and one that encouraged more lengthy and collaborative content)
13. Classmates.com - widely popular website, launched in 1995, that was among the first to create what we now know as a social networking site (way ahead of Friendster, in 2002,  and MySpace, in 2003)
14. GeoCities - launched in 1995, popularized personal web publishing by offering free web hosting and  customizable homepages (honourable mention to Blogger with its 1999 launch it was one of the first and most popular web publishing tools and helped create the blog genre))
15. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) - these guidelines, first published in 1999 by the W3C, have done more than anything else to enable websites to be accessible to people with various abilities 
16. Wikipedia - launched in 2001, two huge contributions: 1) open access to encyclopaedic information and 2) breaks down barriers of official knowledge by allowing anyone to participate in its creation
17. Delicious - launched in 2003, the social bookmarking site became possibly the first instance of folksonmies, that is collaborative user tagging of information objects (in this case bookmarks)
18. Streaming and downloadable media - from listening to the radio or watching video live (such as Victoria's Secret's annual fashion show, the first majorly successful webcast), to downloading music MP3s from Napster or iTunes, to watching videos on YouTube or through IPTV - the Internet has  fundamentally changed our media consumption and purchasing (or lack thereof) behaviour
19. Mobile Web and Internet-enabled mobile apps - mobile apps or mobile-friendly webpages have enabled ubiquitous access to the Internet, surpassing desktop access since 2008
20. Open-source software and standards - free programming languages, such as HTML, JavaScript, and XML (hence AJAX), and software, such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl (hence LAMP), have made it financially possible for anyone to build and host their own websites, breaking down prior elite forms of media production and distribution

Runner-ups:

• Open access publishing - the Internet made it effective to share information freely and widely, with resulting open access journals, such as First Monday (about the Internet) 
• Internet porn - legendary driver of online development and adoption
• Forums and chat rooms - excellent new forms of multi-person communication
• Recommendation systems - using our collective data to help identify things we may like, the music site Pandora is an excellent example of the power of this, the Netflix Prize contest helped propel development in this area
• Google - revolutionized search engines and the first great online-only company
• eBay & PayPal - perfected microsales and consumer-to-consumer commerce
• VoIP & Skype - no more long-distance telephone charges
• Craigslist - the first widely popular online classified website that assisted in the demise of newspapers
• Foursquare - the first geosocial network and location-based service to hit critical mass
• Internet of Things - everything will soon be wired to the Net from cars, refrigerators, and closets

As you can see I had a hard time, limiting myself to 20.

I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on what should be on the list (or off), and any corrections, such as missing predecessors or international developments that set the trend.

In Memoriam: Liz Metcalfe, Digital Pioneer

Canadians often don't recount or adequately value their history, let alone their online history. It was through the efforts of people like Liz Metcalfe that Canadians have an online voice. Liz Metcalfe was involved in a variety of early Canadian projects that launched national online properties.

Liz was a digital pioneer for Canada. Last night, I found out that she was killed in a horrible traffic accident.

Liz began her Internet career in 1989 - long before the Netscape IPO and the meteoric dot.com days. She worked for such Internet collossi as Canada.com, Yahoo, Rogers, and AOL. She help these companies establish their initial presence in Canada. One of the first online portals in Canada's was launched under Liz's direction, Southam's Montreal Gazette portal.

With Rogers she helped launch Quicken.ca, one of Canada's first and largest financial websites (subsequently merged with Canadian Business). Her collaborative reports on Canadian online banking and brokerage offerings were significant in assisting Canadians to move their financial affairs online and spurring the companies to improve their online services. She also provided a stream of regular content for the website and helped develop phenomenally popular RRSP tools. With a background education in film and journalism and a love of technology, Liz was one of the first people to understand the unique nature of the Web medium - helping develop interactive features when most other companies were still offering brochureware.

At an individual level, Liz authored email newsletters and blogs long before they were a mainstay here. Under the various forms of her Media Gleaner she covered domestic and international and tech issues. She was a locus of information and her Facebook postings became topics for diverse, occasionally heated, discussion. An example of this was the purchase of Huffington Post by AOL that she reworked into a blog post

In addition to being one of Canada's leading digital pioneers, Liz was an incredible woman with an unbridled and diverse range of interests and passions. She was a science fiction aficionado - introducing me to such treasures as Ender's Game, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and filk music. She wrote scifi and poetry. Her love of motorcycling was chronicled in her blog, Moto-Mojo. Her solo road-trip through Belgium and France and resulting escapades were a riveting travelogue and vicarious delight.

Liz died on her motorcycle riding back from a charity event that she regularly participated in for Toronto's Rape Crisis Centre. Please consider making a donation in Liz's honour via her CanadaHelps WROAR Ride campaign page.

I owe so much of my Internet career to Liz. After graduating from Humber's Internet management program in 1999, I went to work for a start-up doing programming. It wasn't my cup of tea, but already the dot.com bubble was bursting, as were career opportunities. I really wanted to make content and direct the structure and offerings of websites. I applied for a job at AOL that I didn't get, but a colleague of Liz's referred my name to her. I got a call from Liz about a web producer opening for Quicken.ca. I never liked personal finance and had no background in it, but Liz was so engaging and encouraging, I decided to set up an interview.

I didn't show up. Normally, not showing up for an interview is a definitive act, but Liz called me back. She instinctively knew my concerns and convinced me that my skills and interests could be applied, so I interviewed and started working at Quicken.ca in 2000. Liz was right; it was a great opportunity. She and the Quicken team were excellent role models and teammates. We built an incredible, innovative website together. One of the projects that Liz and I worked on together that I'm most proud of is the University Planner - the first tool in Canada to use StatsCan data to help students calculate and plan for the actual cost of a university education.

Liz also offered daily guidance at our regular morning meetings that she set up. The team would discuss topical news and project details every morning. Through Liz, I learned how to write killer homepage teasers (among them the "Vince Carter teaser" where attaching a celebrity name to any topic guaranteed click-throughs).

The dot.com burst hit the Rogers' online properties hard, so we all moved on to other projects. If it wasn't for Liz, I would likely not have had the opportunity to be a web producer, a job that I loved.

It was Liz who shaped my love of understanding what users want and figuring out how to offer content and experiences to meet their needs. She gave me the career outlet to refine my skills and interests, which I continue to expand through my PhD studies.

On a personal level, Liz was a close friend to me and my family. Liz befriended everyone she met and managed to find time to support all her many friends. As my wife recalls, "You were such a thoughtful, generous person and a true friend. I'll never forget how you actually volunteered to read my tediously long master's thesis (not even my own husband would look at it) and made such kind and supportive comments. You will be greatly missed!"

On her Facebook page, Liz described herself as "an incurable optimist, a collection of contradictions and a cultural hybrid." It was these elements that made her not only a wonderful person to know but such an important person in the history of Canada's Internet.

We miss you Liz!

Update:

Here is Liz's obituary in the Toronto Star and a news story on Liz and the accident on Global.

Second Dot Bomb To Hit Any Time Now

I’m reading a good book, dot.con by John Cassidy - see below to give it a read, on the heyday of dot coms and the Internet bubble of the late 1990s. The events described in the book seem to be happening again, with surreal valuations of Internet companies and hair brain online schemes coming out of the woodwork.

But the book has made me nostalgic for those glory days – the obligatory Fussball table, open and flowing bars, business meetings at Playdium, extravagant launch parties, expensive marketing campaigns, new technologies to learn every month, long hours and fat expense accounts.

While I’d like to think I was more level-headed than the others that got swept into the Internet insanity avalanche, I suppose my decision to go into the Internet field was influenced by rampant hyperbole in the media and business world.

At least I had good reason to go into the Net field. A friend at the time, however, quit her accountant career and took an Internet course to get into the then red-hot field (like many others she was back to her old career soon thereafter). For me though, I was working in dead-end jobs and had little luck putting my Film & Video degree to use. Still going into the Internet was rather crazy, as I didn’t have a computer, no email address, and had only been on the Net about 2 or 3 times before I decided to pursue a career in the field (I did work briefly for an Internet company earlier, by temping for Macromedia in their big launch of Dreamweaver). I almost went into eco-tourism instead as I loved travel so much. But I thought my media education and interest would be more suitable to the Internet. I also thought that television would be on the Net soon and my Film & Video degree would finally pay off!

After the dot bomb things kept chugging along and I thought there was much more sanity in the field. But the excitement over web 2.0 seemed to have history repeating itself again which is bad enough except that it’s happening again so soon!

Yes lately there’s been great reason for excitement (eg. social networking, participatory media, RSS, tagging, the semantic web, etc.).

But a news item today sums up the return to insanity. (As if the purchase price of Club Penguin wasn’t loopy enough, see my prior post on this.)

In MediaPost’s Just an Online Minute Wendy Davis describes the situation of Internet startup Eons. I hadn’t heard of it before, probably as it’s geared to baby boomers, but it was yet another social networking website. There are a gazillion already and really Facebook (& possibly MySpace) and LinkedIn, plus a handful of others are all that will ever be useful.

Eons, as recently as last March, received $22 million dollars plus another $10 million last year. Unsurprisingly, they have not delivered and the company is laying off one third of its staff.

Perhaps dot.con should be mandatory reading for anyone working or investing in the Net.