Platforms & apps

☠ Deadn.✎ 7

Google Reader

A tool for reading every site you cared about in one place, killed for being used by the wrong number of people. Its closure is the single most-cited death in this dictionary.

▸ 2005peak 2010†2013

▲ Fossiln.✎ 3

Leeroy Jenkins

A man shouting his own name and ruining a plan. Was staged, which nobody minded, then appeared as a Jeopardy clue, which everybody did.

▸ 2005peak 2006†2014

☠ Deadn.

Megaupload

Four per cent of all internet traffic, one New Zealand mansion, and a police helicopter. The only site in this dictionary whose death involved a tactical unit.

▸ 2005peak 2011†2012

☠ Deadn.

MySpace Angle

A camera held high and to the side, at arm's length, in a bathroom mirror. The first pose invented for a platform rather than a photographer.

▸ 2005peak 2007†2010

● Alivev.✎ 2

Sideloading

Installing an app from outside the official store — a term the phone industry used from the mid-2000s for loading music by cable, which became the central word of a decade of Apple lawsuits and, in March 2024, EU law. The record notes that on Android it means 'tapping an APK', on iPhone it means 'a court case', and on both it is what your nephew did to get the unlicensed emulator.

▸ 2005peak 2024still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

Top 8

Eight friends, ranked in public, on your profile. The most emotionally dangerous feature ever shipped and it was aimed at fifteen-year-olds.

▸ 2005peak 2007†2009

● Aliven.✎ 3

Wall of Text

A post with no paragraph breaks, presented as an assault — a wall of text — and the reply 'didn't read, lol' that it earned. The record's entry for the format as a crime, and for the fact that the record is, in most entries, a small wall.

▸ 2005peak 2012still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 5

Digg

The front page of the internet until version 4 shipped and the users left in a single week. The canonical proof that a platform can be killed by its own product team.

▸ 2004peak 2008†2010

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Flickr

The photo-sharing site, launched in February 2004 from the wreckage of a Vancouver video game, that invented tagging as a public sport, Creative Commons photo licensing at scale and the missing 'e' in a company name. Bought by Yahoo in 2005, peaked in 2007, and dying since the iPhone put the camera and the audience in one pocket. The record notes it is still where the good photos of 2006 live.

▸ 2004peak 2007still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Gmail

Google's webmail, announced on 1 April 2004 with a gigabyte of free storage at a time when rivals offered two to four megabytes and charged for more. Because of the date, a good part of the internet assumed it was a joke. The record's entry for the April Fool that turned out to be the email address everyone still has.

▸ 2004peak 2014still up

● Alivephr.✎ 3

Going Viral

Spreading uncontrollably — viral — as the word for anything seen by millions in a day, from a 1990s marketing term into the ambition of every post. The record's entry for the disease metaphor that became a goal, and for 'blowing up', its louder sibling.

▸ 2004peak 2012still up

↺ Undeadv.✎ 6

Poke

A button that notified someone you had pressed a button. Nobody could ever explain it; Facebook quietly re-promoted it in 2024 and reported a thirteenfold increase, mostly among teenagers who thought it was new.

▸ 2004peak 2007†2012

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

TheFacebook

The name Facebook launched under on 4 February 2004: a directory for Harvard students, then for other universities, that put a face, a course list and a relationship status on one page. It took 1,000 registrations on its first night. The 'The' was dropped in 2005. The record's entry for the two syllables before the trouble.

▸ 2004peak 2004†2005

☠ Deadn.✎ 5

Wall Post

A public message left on someone's profile for everyone to read. Replaced by the Timeline, which is a wall that scrolls, in 2011.

▸ 2004peak 2008†2011

☠ Deadn.✎ 1

Wisdom of Crowds

Groups guessing better than experts. Held up for ox-weighing and collapsed for everything the internet subsequently applied it to.

▸ 2004peak 2008†2016

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Hi5

The social network that was, for a couple of years around 2007, the biggest site in Latin America, Portugal, Thailand and Mongolia, and almost nowhere else you have heard of. Founded in 2003, it collected 70 million users, a glitter-heavy profile page and a coin-based gift economy, then sold itself to Tagged in December 2011 and became a login screen. The record's entry for the Facebook of countries Facebook had not got to yet.

▸ 2003peak 2007†2011

▲ Fossiln.

MySpace

Customisable profiles, autoplay music and a friend called Tom. Lost every song uploaded before 2015 in a server migration, which is a strange way to bury a music platform.

▸ 2003peak 2008†2011

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Sidekick

The flip-out-keyboard phone, sold by T-Mobile from October 2002, that was the first device on which a teenager could do AIM, email and the web, and was the phone of Paris Hilton, whose 2005 Sidekick hack leaked half of Hollywood's numbers. Peaked in 2007, lost most of its users' data in a 2009 server failure that is still taught as a warning, and was discontinued in May 2011. The record notes its screen swivelled, and that nothing has swivelled since.

▸ 2002peak 2007†2011

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

BitTorrent

Bram Cohen's 2001 protocol for downloading a file in pieces from everyone who already has it, which became the main distribution channel for films, television, Linux and 'seeding' as a moral obligation. Peaked around 2008 as a third of all internet traffic and is dying because Netflix made the honest option easier. The record notes 'torrent' became a verb by 2005, and that a ratio below one still marks a person out.

▸ 2001peak 2008still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Kazaa

The file-sharing program that inherited Napster's users in 2001 and handed them, in exchange for free music, a bundle of adware, a virus named after their favourite band and a copy of a song that turned out to be Bill Clinton's voice. Peaked in 2003 as the most-downloaded software on Earth, was sued into becoming a legal music store, and closed in August 2012. The record notes 'the Kazaa version' of a song is still how some people know it.

▸ 2001peak 2003†2012

● Aliven.✎ 3

Wikipedia

The free encyclopedia anyone can edit, launched on 15 January 2001 as a side project to a failed expert-written one, which by 2007 had made 'don't cite Wikipedia' the most-ignored instruction in education, and which is now the one large website that has not got worse. The record notes the 'Wikipedia rabbit hole', the 'Wikipedia race' to Hitler, the annual fundraising banner and the fact that every AI model was trained on it, and that it still asks for $3.

▸ 2001peak 2007still up

▲ Fossiln.✎ 2

iPod

'A thousand songs in your pocket' — Apple's music player, announced in October 2001 with a click wheel and a $399 price, which by 2008 was selling 55 million a year, made white earbuds a class marker and saved the company that then made the phone that killed it. The last model was discontinued on 10 May 2022. The record notes 'iPod' as generic for any music player, and that the word 'shuffle' still means what it did in 2005.

▸ 2001peak 2008†2022

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

iTunes

Apple's music program, launched in January 2001, whose store from 2003 sold songs for 99 cents and killed the album, and which then absorbed video, podcasts, apps, books, a social network and phone backups until it was the most-hated piece of software on the Mac and the most-installed on Windows. Replaced by three apps in October 2019. The record notes 'a new version of iTunes is available' was the most-ignored sentence of the 2000s.

▸ 2001peak 2008†2019

● Aliven.✎ 3

CAPTCHA

The 'prove you're not a robot' test — distorted words, then house numbers, then a grid of traffic lights — invented at Carnegie Mellon around 2000 and named in 2003 as a strained acronym for 'Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart'. The record notes that reCAPTCHA from 2007 used humans to digitise books and label street signs, and that the machines can now pass the test and the humans increasingly cannot.

▸ 2000peak 2010still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Fanon

Something so widely believed by fans that it feels official and is not — fanon — as the collective headcanon, and the record's entry for the facts that everyone knows and nobody wrote. Half of what anyone knows about any character is fanon.

▸ 2000peak 2013still up

↺ Undeadn.✎ 5

Homestar Runner

A cartoon website with no adverts, no algorithm and a regular update schedule. The Strong Bad emails remain the best evidence that people once visited a website on purpose, weekly.

▸ 2000peak 2005†2010

● Aliveabbr.✎ 3

ILY

'I love you' — in three letters, and 'ilysm' for 'so much' — as the affection of the text message, sent to friends more than to lovers, and the record's entry for the love that fits in a status bar.

▸ 2000peak 2012still up

▲ Fossilv.✎ 1

Pwned

Defeated, from a missed key. Kept alive past its natural span by a security website that tells you whether your password has been, which is the only respectable use left.

▸ 2000peak 2006†2012

● Aliven.✎ 3

Self-Insert

A character who is the author, put into the story — the self-insert — as fanfiction's oldest form and most-mocked, and the record's entry for the wish made into a character, which every writer has done and few admit.

▸ 2000peak 2015still up

▲ Fossiln.✎ 3

BlackBerry

The email-first phone with the physical keyboard, born as a two-way pager in 1999, that ran the corporate world and the Obama campaign, was nicknamed 'CrackBerry' for its hold on its owners, and peaked in 2009 with half the US smartphone market before the iPhone and Android took all of it by 2013. The company stopped making its own phones in 2016 and switched its old devices off on 4 January 2022. The record notes 'BBM me' and the red blinking light as its two great contributions to English.

▸ 1999peak 2009†2022

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Blogosphere

The idea that independent sites linking to each other formed a single conversation. Died when the conversation moved indoors.

▸ 1999peak 2006†2012

◐ Dyingn.✎ 6

LiveJournal

A diary with friends-only locks, mood icons and the current music field. Sold to a Russian company in 2007 and has been someone else's website ever since, still running, still not yours.

▸ 1999peak 2005still up

↺ Undeadn.✎ 2

RSS

Subscribing to a site directly, without an intermediary deciding what you see. Declared obsolete in 2013 and quietly indispensable again by 2024.

▸ 1999peak 2007†2013

● Aliven.✎ 1

Zombo.com

A site where you can do anything, at Zombo.com, said aloud forever. Rebuilt in HTML5 when Flash died, which makes it the only promise from 1999 still being kept.

▸ 1999peak 2002still up

☠ Deadn.

Open Diary

The first site where strangers could comment on your diary. Everything about the social web that turned out to be a problem was in beta here by 1999.

▸ 1998peak 2001†2014

▲ Fossiln.

Slashdot Effect

A small site collapsing under sudden attention from a large one. The concept survives; only the name has been buried.

▸ 1998peak 2003†2012

● Aliveabbr.✎ 3

AGI

Artificial general intelligence — a machine that can do any intellectual task a human can, a term coined by Mark Gubrud in 1997, spread by Ben Goertzel in the 2000s, and since 2023 the thing every AI lab is either about to build, warning you about, or defining down to mean their next release. The record notes AGI is always two to five years away, has been since 2015, and that the definition moves whenever a model gets close.

▸ 1997peak 2024still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

AIM

Screen names, away messages, the door-opening sound. Twenty years of teenage life logged to nobody's disk in particular, and switched off in December 2017 without anyone being able to say goodbye on it.

▸ 1997peak 2003†2017

☠ Deadn.✎ 5

Bert Is Evil

A Sesame Street puppet photoshopped next to history's villains. Retired by its creator in October 2001 after a collage appeared on a real protest poster, which is more than most jokes can claim.

▸ 1997peak 1998†2001

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Cursor Trail

A comet of stars following your mouse across someone's page about horses. Pointless, delightful, and the last time a website did something purely because you had moved.

▸ 1997peak 2000†2003

● Aliven.✎ 2

Password Manager

The app that remembers your passwords so you can stop using the same one with a 1 on the end — around since Bruce Schneier's Password Safe in 1997, commercial from 2006, and mainstream only after every 'use a password manager' lecture had been given twice. The record notes that the standard objection ('what if they get hacked') was answered by LastPass in 2022, and that people still use them, because the alternative is your dog's name.

▸ 1997peak 2022still up

▲ Fossiln.✎ 3

T9

'Text on 9 keys' — the predictive typing on a numeric keypad, from 1997, that let a person write a message by pressing each key once and trusting the dictionary, which is how 'home' became 'good', 'book' became 'cool' and a generation learned to type without looking. Peaked around 2005, was killed by touchscreens by 2012, and the record notes that people who could T9 under a desk in class still describe it with the pride of a lost language.

▸ 1997peak 2005†2012

↺ Undeadn.✎ 7

88x31 Button

A tiny rectangular badge linking to a friend's site or announcing your browser loyalties. Currently living a second life among people who have decided the first one was fine.

▸ 1996peak 2000†2006

☠ Deadabbr.

A/S/L

Age, sex, location, asked in that order of every stranger. Died when platforms began answering the question for you, permanently and in public.

▸ 1996peak 2000†2005

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Dancing Baby

A 3D infant cha-cha-ing in a void. The first viral animation, and the first one to appear on network television before most people had seen it online.

▸ 1996peak 1998†1999

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Hotmail

The first big free webmail, launched on American Independence Day 1996 as a symbol of freedom from ISP email, bought by Microsoft for $400 million in 1997, and for a decade the address of every teenager on MSN Messenger, usually 'sk8er_boi_2001@hotmail.com'. Folded into Outlook.com in May 2013. The record notes the hotmail.com addresses still work and that anyone still using one for job applications has been told.

▸ 1996peak 2005†2013

● Aliven.✎ 1

Phishing

Fishing for credentials with a fake login page, spelt in leet. The only 1990s hacker coinage to appear on a bank's official warning poster.

▸ 1996peak 2006still up

☠ Deadn.

Spacer GIF

A one-pixel transparent image stretched to hold a layout together. The whole visual web was built on an invisible picture of nothing for a decade.

▸ 1996peak 2000†2008