Research Paper On The Rise And Fall Of The Early Days Of The World Wide Web

Technology alters the experiences of people in many ways. The development of computers advances rapidly with great speed. The surplus of advancement in technology started the development of abacus that offered an easy way to solve mathematical problems. When internet started during the 90s, it was a simple device for academics and researchers as a commercial use. The evolution of World Wide Web happened at an exponential rate. The development and advancement of the dotcom transformed the business world as a way of communication and providing massive opportunities for sales and marketing departments. Unfortunately, there was mismanagement of the World Wide Web and resulted to a bug loss for a number of companies.

The Rise of the Internet

In the beginning, the World Wide Web provided only screens filled with text. Hence, even though it was working well as a means of exchange information, the entire visual looked boring. In an effort to make the World Wide Web a lot more aesthetic, AOL and CompuServe started to develop the graphical user interfaces or the GUIs. This contributed additional color and layout, yet still appeared boring. IBM computers started to implement Windows interfaces. The internet started to become useful but still does not look good. As it evolved, the World Wide Web altered its appearance. Sounds and pictures became possible for display and exchange. The web had significant predecessors, the most vital of which is the Xanadu project which functioned using the Hypertext. Ted Nelson envisioned a library with all the information. To connect to the hyperlinks, Douglas Engelbart created the mouse, which later turned into a significant portion of personal computers. The Uniform Resource Locator or the URL was another significant building block. This enabled an option of finding means by naming a website. The Hypertext Markup Language enabled pages to show diverse pictures, colors, fonts, and sizes. Tim Berners Lee integrated all this ideas together and established the World Wide Web. As it continued to develop, web server and browser became available. Mosaic was the first browser to take advantage of the many designs of the World Wide Web. Yet, speed was a problem for Mosaic.
In 1993, the World Wide Web became freely usable by people. The browser started to experience change that at the end of 1994, there had been rapid growth. Marc Andreesen established Netscape Corporation and growth just continued. Between 1994 and 2000, the World Wide Web started its era. During the middle part of the 90s, the first search engines emerged and Google took a dominant position in the market.
During the early days, the World Wide Web was merely for display of information. Shopping and purchasing online came a bit later. In 1994, Amazon developed its first concept and discovered that online shopping would be a great business in the years ahead. Various other industries took advantage of the internet including the aviation industry, travel industry, and electronic industry.

Events that Caused the Bubble

The invention of the World Wide Web resulted to the largest economic booms in world history (Ciocon, 2014). As it became evident to speculators and investors that the internet developed a new market, IPOs began to follow each other. At times, the assessment of companies was merely based on a piece of paper. Companies found it viable to invest on business over the internet because of the easy acquisition of millions of dollars subsidy (Cohen-Almagor, 2011). The fundamental assumption of the investment concept in terms of understanding the profitability of a business was not given attention. Investors focused on making it big in the internet world (Valliere & Peterson, 2004). Companies were determined to put in a huge amount of money without having a definite business plan (Valliere & Peterson, 2004). Investors were greatly reliant on the rapid growth of its customer bases. Often, such move implied big start-up losses. Due to stock option plans, executives and employees became millionaires overnight. Communication companies including internet service providers and mobile network operators started to put in a lot of money in network infrastructure. Debts rose as companies invested in network technology and acquisition of licenses for wireless network.
In 2000, the Nasdaq Composite shares reached its peak with 5046.86 points. This was twice the value it obtained in 1999 (Cohen-Almagor, 2011). On March 11 of that same year, the dotcom bubble burst and technology shares started to decline. One of the primary causes of the deflation was the decision of the antitrust case filed against Microsoft. Nasdaq started losing 10% of its value. On the 4th of April 2000, the Nasdaq encountered a massive downfall. The Nasdaq moved in to a free-fall as investors began to realize that a lot of the new technology companies were losing.
A year following the deflation, a lot of the venture capital supported technology businesses had used up their funding and went bankrupt. On the 9th of October 2002, Nasdaq hit its lowest point at 1114.11 or equivalent to a 78% loss of value than its peak years before (Scott, 2004). Other than Microsoft Company, Napster had to endure court trials as well. Napster is a company that allowed the sharing of digital music. The software program was established by Sean Parker together with his two friends. In a short time, the program rose to fame. However, there were copyrights infringements which put the company into trouble. Kim Schmitz, a German hacker, also became a millionaire after launching several internet companies. Later, Schmitz sold his 80% shares to Data Protect. Data Protect provides protection to the data services. Some months later, Data Protect declared bankruptcy. Schmitz was the core figure in many cases for embezzlement and insider trading in relation to his technology businesses.

Lessons Learned

The dotcom bubble is characterized by rapid increase in the stock exchanges. This period is likewise termed as the golden age era or the web. The event raised with innumerable websites and at large the tech industry. Moreover, a number of these websites as well as companies went into bankruptcy and learned a valued lesson. Majority of the investors experienced several losses on the dot com bubble which facilitated in causing a mild economic downturn back in 2000. A lot of experts argued that many businesses were not restrained by the downfall of the bubble. Web 2.0 started a fresh round of assumption and investing prospects around 2004. Of the many technology companies that were established when World Wide Web was still on the rise, only a few companies managed to survive. This includes Amazon and Google. A lot of them went bankrupt. A number of entrepreneurs participated in risky investments and remained involved in the technology industry. Some of them put up new businesses including Sean Parker of Napster who later became the founding president of the famous social media site called Facebook. Following the deflation of the bubble, investors were a lot wary in investing in technology business and began to highlight the need for a more realistic plan. Nevertheless, in the past years, several IPO companies also made headlined. LinkedIn, a social networking site, doubled its shares in 2011. Facebook also was among the mostly followed social media site by observers and investors. At present, Facebook is valued at over $100 billion. The social media site has been in operation for many years now.

Conclusion

The World Wide Web Bubble of the 90s as well as early 2000s was characteristic of a new technology that developed a new market having a lot of possible goods and services. Investors who were highly optimistic at that time were greatly blinded by successes. Following the burst of the bubble, the markets and the companies became more cautious in terms of investing in businesses such as the new technology. It must be remembered that the present popularity that a lot of mobile devices experience, including tablets and smartphones, as well as the infinite contemporaries, and the reality that there have been a number of technology IPOs lately, will provide life to the new generation of businesses that desire to venture on this type of market.

References

Cicon, J. (2014). Big Data and the Dot Com Bubble. International Journal Of Economics And Finance,6(8). doi:10.5539/ijef.v6n8p15
Cohen-Almagor, R. (2011). Internet History. International Journal Of Technoethics, 2(2), 45-64. doi:10.4018/jte.2011040104
Korsunsky, B. (2003). The Dot Com Bubble. The Physics Teacher, 41(4), 251. doi:10.1119/1.1564512
Scott, J. (2004). The rise and fall of a dot-com. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Pub.
Valliere, D., & Peterson, R. (2004). Inflating the bubble: examining dot-com investor behaviour. Venture Capital, 6(1), 1-22. doi:10.1080/1369106032000152452