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Monday, May 15, 2006

AOL is dead. 

A Washington Post ranking of top web domains indicates some interesting trends over the last year (from February 2005 to February 2006) . Only one domain in the top 50 demonstrated neither growth nor decline in the number of unique visitors to their site: AOL. However, among the biggest losers in audience are giants names like windowsmedia.com, expedia.com, monster.com, geocities.com, passport.com, real.com, orbitz.com, overstock.com, cheaptickets.com, microsoft.com, all of which were down by at least 10% over last year.

Contrast that with the exponential growth of wikipedia.org (275%), myspace.com (318%), and blogger.com (528%). The web, it seems, is ceasing to be primarily a purveyor of goods and services, and increasingly turning into a marketplace for the free exchange of ideas. Do you remember a decade ago when "the Information Superhighway" was supposed to revolutionize capitalism as we knew it? I certainly recall being warned that if I didn't get in on the ground level with this internet thing, I would miss out on something big. (I haven't checked recently, but I'm pretty sure the guy that told me that is still working two jobs to pay for his mortgage and his minivan.)

What we've seen instead is people storming the gates of the internet to transform it back into the great communication tool that Al Gore created it to be.

(HT: Challies)

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Comments:

Good points Russell,
Still, it is worth noting the tremendous growth experienced by many companies since the internet was brought to us by Mr. Gore. Had you purchased AOL stock at the beginning you would have seen some very handsome returns over the following decade. I wouldnt totally downplay the effect of internet on commerce either. I have found that I can often get a better deal online, and I find it to be more convenient as well. I must say that wikipedia and blogger are among my favorite places on the web and I am glad to know that they are thriving.

-J

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