15 websites that changed the world

the guardian is celebrating the world wide web’s birthday by publishing a list of 15 websites that change the world. here it is, in an abridged form, commented by me:

1. ebay.com (168million users)
2. wikipedia.org (912,000 visits per day)
3. napster.com (500,000 paying subscribers)
4. youtube.com (100million video clips watched a day)
5. blogger.com (18.5million unique visitors)
6. friendsreunited.com (15million users)
7. drudgereport.com (8-10million page views a day) *
8. myspace.com (100million users)
9. amazon.com (35million customers)
10. slashdot.org (5.5 million visitors per month)
11. salon.com (2.5-3.5 visitors per month)
12. craigslist.org (4billion page views per month)
13. google.com (1billion search requests a day)
14. yahoo.com (400million users)
15. easyjet.com (30million passengers in 2005)

as the guardians article states: the web has become casual. for many people the web is the internet. this list proves it by selecting websites most people just take as normal media and/or utilities. of course it lists google, yahoo, ebay, amazon – the big players. but it also contains sites i’ve never heard about. slashdot.org is for geeks, but what’s salon.com for?

Salon Media Group, Inc. (OTC: SALN.0B) is an Internet media company that produces 7 original content sections as well as two online communities — Table Talk and The WELL. The content sites, updated daily or more frequently, include News and Politics, Opinion, Technology & Business, Arts & Entertainment, Books, Life and Comics. -> salon’s quicksheet for the press

i see, so it’s an online publication – never recognized the url then. same goes for the drudgereport and craigslist, which are regionally limited, i guess. oh well, i grow old… a nerd not knowing the top 15 websites (well, to some queer british journalists – what do they know at all? )

at least i enjoy services as youtube.com and it’s unnumbered derivates. i swear i do not have a profile at myspace.com, thank god! on the other side i do have a profile on stayfriends.org, which is a german competitor of friendsreunited.com. plus, i have put this blog online, so i am a competitor of blogger.com.

did you notice that there are services on the list which ain’t no website at all? napster is an application (and a shadow of its former self), and easyjet.com is merely a business model, not a specific website.

anyway, that’s a fairly common list, i guess. most people would come up with a lot of the entries on the list. i’ld come up with a few other items, i guess. here’s what i miss:

1. bugmenot.com – find and share logins for websites that force you to register
2. mf8 – praise the machine! the mainframe8 network – a must see (shameless self-advert)
3. www.i-do-not-know.yet – comment and tell me what you like!

* i won’t link drudgereport.com, as i find it disgusting at first sight.