Twenty years ago nobody knew what they were doing when designing a website. It was all something new and you couldn’t talk about strategies, research, laws, theories and typography. It was all chaotic. And it all started in 1989, when the first browser called World Wide Web was released, in the same time as the first website. However, it is not possible to see the first website ever, as there isn’t much information about it, but a website looked pretty much like this one and was used to give out basic information.

It all continued on a very slow path until 1996, which is considered by many the beginning of a new era in web design. Designers started using background colors – most of them really vibrant and painful to look at – but some of them kept it simple and decided to go for white – and even used some other fonts than the default ones. In this era people started overusing the animated GIFs we all hate today.

In the screenshot below you can see the Yahoo! website back in December 1996. This is one of the good examples of that year, but trust me, not all of them looked this good. You’ll see other websites below from 1996 – I am sure you can’t look at them  for too long and would be able to make a very long list of mistakes. People were not doing this back then, because the web was quite new and they were really happy with the websites they had – these were huge achievements for them back then.

Yahoo!'s website in December 1996

McDonald’s webpage was incredibly hard to look at, although there was not much text. The background red combined with the yellow created a very powerful visual – truth is that everybody associates this color combination with McDonald’s today, so it might be also thanks to their first webpage.

McDonald's website in November 1996.

aol.com in December 1996

Aligned to the left and with a maximum width of around 600 px, Apple’s website was not very smooth back then – unlike today. However, their design was still one of the best available on the web and looking at it didn’t affect your eye’s health at all, unlike some of the other ones.

Although not as fancy as today, Apple's design from March 1997 was one of the best on the internet.

Shortly after this era, another one started: the era of Cascading Style Sheets. Although not even half as advanced as today, CSS made a huge difference back then. There were still many wrong colors being used, but the layouts started getting better and you can see in the screenshot below some of them even used a grid system, if you are not so demanding and precise.

Yahoo’s June 1998 website was actually looking good and it was one of the best of its generation. But what would you expect from the king of the web during the 90s?

Yahoo! Kept a white and clean background, but still had blue link colors.

Google’s 1998 webpage, although the service was still in beta, looked really simple for that period, a trend which the American giant has continued with, right up until today. The main functionality of Google was and still is searching, therefore there was no reason to clutter the site too much.

Google Beta (1998) had a smooth design.

As you can see in the screenshot below, Apple’s webpage evolved a lot from 1997 to 1998 and already started looking like what was going to be one of the pioneers of the minimalistic approach. Big visuals, not a lot text, no advertising and an interesting layout – this all started shortly after CSS1 and continues to this day.

Apple.com in July 1998

Even AOL’s website looked better by April 1998. They started to have a grid system, used the colors of their logo and personalized their menu by using buttons.

AOL in April 1998 (not all the images captured)

The colors were becoming even more popular because designers thought they will keep the people on their web pages. They didn’t think the same colors would make it impossible to look at the page for more than a few minutes. However, as said before, the good that came from this was the fact that it associated colors with brands – blue for Microsoft, red and yellow for McDonald’s and so on.

Another problem were the fonts. Times New Roman and Courier New were very popular (Comic Sans was already released and soon to become hugely popular). Although there were many other options, people preferred to use these two typefaces in everything, from web pages and invitations to e-mails and documents. Writing with black was popular and everybody kept it like that. If there was something which needed to stand out, red was the color of choice. Otherwise I am sure you remember the blue underlined links (which you can see in most of the examples shown here until now). Because typography was not an important part of the design, bold and italics were not very used either to make text stand out.  A font that was widely used in the 90s and is still very popular today was Arial, which can even be seen on AOL’s website.

Leaving too much empty space was madness back in the 90s, also because centering a web page was not very popular. You can see Yahoo!’s first website (shown above) and notice how much empty space there was on the right side. People also started using background images, but because the images were not big enough, in many cases they started to repeat them and this created an awful visual.

Buttons also started to appear and become more and more popular, because they allowed designers to further customize the menus and put the focus on the navigation, while icons were also used all the time – it was the first time when visual elements had a use. This was also the period when animated GIFs exploded and everybody used them. There were almost no websites without them and people really appreciated the effect they created.

The year of 1999 was the year of a change. People started to design smarter and thought more about usability, grid systems, layouts and even colors. Most of the websites with vibrant background colors were redesigned and started looking better (McDonald’s got rid of that vibrant red from the background one year before).

CNN's webpage in August 2000 (not all the images captured)

Microsoft in February 1999 (not all the images captured)

Shortly after this, bright colors were on the way out and creating contrast between the background and the font color was critical. Most of the designers started using white as the default background color and it worked really well. Designers started designing in pixels instead of inches like they had been before. Maybe the most important thing was the fact that the content of a page was ordered, with the menu being in focus most of the time.

The importance of typography increased as well during this period, with people thinking a bit more about the target audience. Comic Sans becomes popular for child websites (although for a period it was used for everything) and some other fonts come into focus. There was no option for embedding back then, so designers were constrained, but at least they started to experiment more with what they already had.

Websites were not flexible at all back then and because of the many screen sizes available, it was difficult to design something to look good for everybody – responsive design was just unheard of. The use of buttons started to decrease as well because people learned how to properly play with font and colors – typography’s importance increased even more.

GoDaddy's website from December 2002 even had a dropdown navigation.

By August 2002, Apple’s website looked a lot like the one they have today. The navigation was a dropdown, they used big images for the featured article/product and four small boxes for other products at the bottom – a lot of similarity with Apple’s current website. The Cupertino-based company showed everybody how they should design a simple, but effective website.

Apple in August 2002.

The use of icons and boxes increased. As mentioned earlier, icons were a good way of focusing the users attention (especially on navigation links), while the boxes were used to help the user find his way around the website and also for structuring content. Luckily, the use of animated GIFs decreased by this period and they would never be as popular as they were a couple of years before.

Another era started in 2002, when the so-called web 2.0 concept appeared for the first time. The use of colors became more theoretical and everybody used them to make the websites more appealing, rather than flashy. The use of Flash – right then on its way in – was popular until 2008 when its use decreased dramatically. Flash animations became more and more popular and most of the websites started looking more professional, as we would say today.

Forums were already spread around and most of them had the same look and feel, like in the image below.

Softnews Romania in February 2003

Shortly after this, the hover effects started to appear and they were a hit. Everybody was using them because they created focus and helped the user navigate.

Footers were also increasing in popularity and they were always used to display copyright information, privacy policy, terms of use or contact information.

Color palettes started to become harmonious and be used wisely. They started to create impact and designers knew that, if used correctly, colors can make a huge difference, especially then when not everyone had this information. The use of typography increased and, combined with colors and contrast, made the text interesting – for the first time in web history.

Responsive web design still didn’t appear at this point, but at least there were no more problems with background images. Now it was easy to calculate everything in pixels and repeating background images disappeared (they appeared again later on to create what we now refer to as patterns). Also, using background images instead of solid colors went low-key and designers preferred to avoid it.

Probably the first real interactive website was one for Coca-Cola. They showed the world how to use colors smartly and how to integrate them with flashy, visual animations that kept the users on their page for ever, even if there was not really too much going on there.

The web as we know it today started in 2005, when everybody realized cluttered sites are not popular, and started to keep them as simple as possible. Single pages appeared and made a huge impact because they were just what lots of users needed. Single pages gave design a fresh look and simplified the navigation. Designers started playing with font sizes and color and combined them so that text was in focus – integrating multiple fonts was tried for the first time in this period. The “back to top” button was also seen for the first time in this period and many websites adopted it, as it made navigation easier.

By mid 2006, Yahoo!'s webpage was simple and effective - no flashy elements.

In this period websites were becoming more than just a way of supplying basic information. They were part of an identity, soon even a part of a strategy and people visited them not only for information, but also for relaxation and inspiration.

In 2008 another era started, which lasted for only few years (although some signs of it are still online today). This was the retro period, where old fashioned elements started becoming popular. No, not the GIFs and the tables, but retro colors, text, illustrations and other elements could be seen all over the place. This is also when the minimalistic design approach started, but it was nothing more than an idea yet.

forefathersgroup.com incorporates lots of retro elements

The minimalistic approach started to become more than just an idea in 2010. We are currently in the minimalistic era, where it all has to be designed fast, it has to stay simple and still do its job and create an experience for the user. At the same time, although many websites turn to this concept, each one of them has to have something special – so that people will remember it and come back. Now it’s a lot about colors, typography and contrast – the best one being between white and black.

How simple can a website be? Apple's the best example.

There are things we can notice everywhere. The color palettes are congruent and are not thrown out there just for the sake of it – they are used with a purpose. Hierarchy was introduced as well and it is not only shown through position, but also through font size, font type and colors. Balance is also a key word in today’s web design and creating a positive, attractive atmosphere on the website is the purpose of any designer. Responsive web design is popular today and there is no such thing as not being able to make a website look good on all the screens.

The typography goes beyond limits and being able to embed fonts made it even more challenging and interesting. Although too many fonts can lead to a bad design, if you know how to use them you will learn the key to getting people to read your text. Buttons are still used (think of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and RSS) and are the way to navigate through pages, although they are not widely used anymore in menus. The problems with images and resolutions disappeared as well.

There is also a new style in town for background choices. There can be images, patterns or even solid colors – in today’s web you can integrate them with everything. Animations are not popular anymore, but are still used here and then – however, they do not affect the loading speed of the sites as much as before.

With more than 20 years since the design started to develop, it is easy to see that everything moves fast and that everything keeps improving. It is amazing how you can think that nothing can be better, and then in a few years something new comes and everybody is excited about it. The internet went from rough to beautiful and useful and will most definitely continue on its path upwards. Lots and lots of changes will continue to be made and the question is: are you ready for them? Are you ready for when a crazy designer will see an opportunity to push the web even farther? Will you jump on his bandwagon or will you just continue to do things the way you do already? If the history of web design has taught us something, it is the fact that we always continue to evolve. You should always be ready and willing to do the same when the opportunity arises…

Below you will meet some of the world’s best inventors when it comes to disseminating information and improving technology as we know it. I must warn you, all but one have left this world. Still, with new technology booming every month, it surely won’t hurt learning about them!

As Plato once said, “study the past if you would divine the future,” so we must!

Printing Press –  Johannes Gutenberg

Image from Wikipedia

One cannot deny the importance of mass production and being able to disseminate information. Prior to the invention of the printing press, lower class people could only dream of reading a book and being educated. This was in the 13th and 14^th centuries, a time when books were almost the price of gold and a time when scribes wrote each word by hand of every copy of every book. You can imagine how hard it was to acquire a book!

The invention of mechanized printing led to the Printing Revolution, a period where information became widely available and much more affordable. This opened a new world for people to learn new things that in the past were only a dream of having, it also gave birth to many scholars and curious intellectuals.

Looking back, without the propagation of cheap information we wouldn’t be here today savoring technology and sweet information!

Computer –  Charles Babbage
(Dec. 26, 1791 –  Oct. 18, 1871)

Image from Wikipedia

Ah, so Charles Babbage invented the computer. What’s so shocking about it? Well, several years before it was possible to make a model, he had already designed one using ink and paper. He had already laid out plans that years to come would blow mathematicians’ minds away.

It is also interesting to note that Charles Babbage worked closely with Ada Lovelace (born Augusta Ada Byron, daughter of Lord Byron). Together they developed the Analytical Engine, which gave Ada Lovelace the title of First Programmer.

Electricity –  Nikola Tesla
(July 10, 1856 –  Jan. 7, 1943)

Nikola Tesla chilling in his laboratory like a boss.

Image from Wikipedia.

Perhaps Nikola Tesla is one of the greatest minds of our time to be forgotten, not because of his weird conjectures, but because of a conspiracy against him during his time by envious people. Today we are enjoying the flow of electricity to our homes making our appliances and gadgets come to life. Without the ability to harnessed electricity, we couldn’t possibly hope to have advanced technologically as it is a prerequisite.

If you have played one of those strategic games, like Red Alert, you will learn that you need to upgrade or research a certain technology before advancing to the next. That’s how it is in real life, and harnessed electricity is the timeless breakthrough that will always be useful to every human living on this planet.

In honor of Nikola Tesla’s achievements, the Tesla unit was named after him. In the game Red Alert, they honored Tesla by naming several characters and buildings there after him, such as the Tesla Tank, Tesla Tower, and Tesla Trooper.

There is more to Tesla then just being named in computer games and as the inventor of harnessed electricity. He dreamt of inventing a wireless means of transporting electricity from a single point to just about anywhere. Unfortunately he was not able to do it because his life was cut short. On the other hand, he may have not successfully invented wireless transfer of electricity, but he managed to do it, although not perfectly and quite impractical. What it was lacking was long distance transfer.

Walkman –  Nobutoshi Kihara
(Oct. 14, 1926 –  Feb. 13, 2011)

Image from Wikipedia

The Walkman is truly one of the first revolutions in the entertainment industry, the first one to break the thinking that BIG is always better.

It’s a sad thing that children born today (2000s) will have no idea what a Walkman is. I’m 22 and yet I enjoyed one when I was young. I was even brought by my cousin to recording stores to purchase his “tapes”.

If Wikipedia is to be trusted, Masaru Ibuka (a Sony co-founder) allegedly said that Mr. Kihara is “godlike” because after a few moments of discussing concepts, he will develop a prototype of it within a day.

C Programming Language –  Dennis Ritchie
(Sept. 9, 1941 –  Oct. 2011)

This is the photo of the man you should all be thankful of, whose passing unfortunately didn't create a worldwide mourning.

Image from Wikipedia

Dennis Ritchie is the person responsible for the creation of the C language and is a key developer of the UNIX operating system. UNIX systems are widely used on different platforms and devices, and today’s technology wouldn’t be possible without the help of these two inventions.

The development of C and UNIX led to various advances in both software and hardware. Due to his work, he received the Turning Award and IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal.

Touch Screen –  E.A. Johnson

Contrary to popular belief, Steve Jobs didn’t invent touch screens. Although there is very little information online about E. A. Johnson, the inventor of the first touch screen, there are published resources that prove it. See “Touch Displays: A Programmed Man-Machine Interface,” published in the year 1967.

Everywhere you go today you’ll find devices with touch screens. Kiosks at your favorite shopping mall, the ATM, the devices you use, and even vending machines.

Telephone –  Alexander Graham Bell
(Mar. 3, 1847 –  Aug. 2, 1922)

An actor that looks like Keanu Reeves portraying Alexander Graham Bell for an AT&T film.

Image from Wikipedia

Imagine life without your mobile phone or even the internet. Sucks, right? And that’s the reason why you need to know the humble beginnings of these light-speed communication!

Prior to the invention of the telephone, many people did not imagine that it was even possible. It’s like witchcraft! And since the snowball effect applies to everything, like when a thing gets started it won’t stop no matter what, the birth of the telephone opened a new world for fast communication. Which leads us to the World Wide Web.

Update: This is probably the most controversial item on our list, and to avoid further rants I’ll share commenter AlexanderDas‘ link to The Guardian that says it was actually Antonio Meucci who invented the first telephone that can transmit voice. If you will do a quick search and look at the history of its making, the first voice transmission was made during Bell and Meucci’s timeline. Several years prior to theirs, only vibrations and clanking were made.

World Wide Web –  Tim Berners-Lee

The World Wide Web is one of the most important inventions of mankind. The thought of it was impossible, nearly witchcraft if you could hear people from back then speak about it, but I wasn’t capable of thinking things like that yet when I was born (1989). But I had my piece of WWW-less until my junior year in high school. Yes, that’s when I first accessed the internet for more than an hour (first time was during freshman year, just a look at Yahoo and nothing more).

The bad things aside, the Internet is now creating a new world-wide culture transcending race, distance, and even time. Somehow, a global consciousness is emerging. From the fast spread of free information that is accessible to many, down to communicating with close friends and family, you just can’t ignore the glaring contribution of Tim Berners-Lee and the team responsible for the WWW we now enjoy!

Humble Beginnings

Apple was founded by the ‘two Steves: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. They were two very different teenagers, but both are geniuses in their own way. Both Steve’s grew up in San Jose, California– now better known as Silicon Valley.

Before they became billionaires and founders of the coolest company in the world, they were teenage outcasts. Three decades ago the two Steve’s were mere college dropouts, Jobs from Reeds and Wozniak from Berkeley. The two Steve’s met at Hewlett-Packard, while Jobs was working as a summer employee and Wozniak as a calculator manufacturer.

The Woz was an especially gifted engineer of his time, making and selling illegal devices that he made. One particular device allowed users to make free long distance calls (which was a big deal in the 1970s  when long distance calls were expensive). Wozniak had done so by hacking into AT&T’s long distance network. An ironic beginning if you think of it, since AT&T is now perhaps one of Apple’s most important business partners.

Later on, Jobs convinced Wozniak to make self-made computers with him. While Steve Wozniak merely enjoyed creating machines, Jobs had always seen the marketability of personal computers. To start their own company, they sold their most precious possessions. Jobs sold his Volkswagen Bus and Wozniak sold his programmable HP calculator. They gathered $1,250 and started their business in Jobs’ basement.

Start of the Great Company

It was in Steve Jobs’ tiny basement that they invented the first personal computer. On April Fool’s Day, 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak released the first Apple I computer and started the company Apple Computers.

The first Apple machine made use of a TV as a display system–a great addition since most machines of the time had no display at all. Text was faster than teleprinter at that time, typing at 60 characters per second. It also had a bootstrap code on ROM for easy start-up. Like a car, the Apple I computer had a hood that the owner could open up and tinker with the machine. Users were encouraged to open and tinker with the computer; to make it better, to make it faster and to add some features.

Byte Shop, a local computer shop, offered to buy 50 of the computers if it came fully assembled, paying US $500 each. The two couldn’t afford to pay for the components, so Jobs approached Cramer Electronics to get components on 30 day terms. With that, the two Steve’s spent days on end building the computers, delivered it on time and paid his supplier with a neat profit for their efforts and for the next order.

Steve Jobs invited Ronald Wayne, a 41-year-old former colleague from Atari to join in their Apple start-up. Jobs offered Wayne 10% of the company, although he kept his job at Atari and worked for Apple at night. The partnership with Ronald Wayne didn’t last long, though. Twelve days after Apple’s release, Ronald Wayne sold his 10% share for US $800. A meager sum if you consider the fact that Wayne’s 10% share would’ve been worth US $35.3 billion today.

1977 – 1980s: Fast Growth

After Apple I, Wozniak now thought about making a bigger and better machine. Since they now had the money from the sales on their first computer, Wozniak moved on and made an improved version, the Apple II. The computer was presented on April 16, 1977 during the West Coast Computer Fair. A Japanese chemist named Toshio Mizushima became interested in the Apple II prototype, and later on became the first authorized Apple dealer in Japan.

Image from Old Computers

The Apple II, also known as the Apple ][, became known as the most popular computer of all time. The TV interface was completely redesigned. It could handle text, graphics, and later on, color. It became more ready-to-use than its predecessor, since the Apple I required you to plug parts together & type the code to run the program.

Image from Tony Olsen

By this time Apple needed more money to grow as a company. The solution came from an angel investor named Mike Markkula, who was referred to him by Don Valentine and in turn was referred to by Regis McKenna. Valentine, after first meeting the young and unkempt Jobs, told McKenna: ‘Why did you send me this renegade from the human race?’ He was uninterested in funding Apple, but recommended Markula. Jobs visited him and convinced the would-be investor the market potentials of personal computers. Markkula invested $92,000 in Apple and a bank loan of US $250,000.

Markkula held a huge influence particularly in the formative years of Apple. Wozniak even credits Markkula for Apple’s success more than himself. He provided the adult supervision to the young Jobs and Wozniak. He served as a mentor to Jobs teaching him the the ins and outs of business and management. Aside from helping the company obtain credit and capital, he brought in Michael Scott to be the first president and CEO of Apple. He promised his wife to stay at the venture for four years, he eventually stayed for two decades. Markkula is responsible for recommending the floppy disk drive, after Markkula discovered that the checkbook balancing program he had written was too slow on the data cassette.

Apple’s most famous success is the famed Macintosh. It was the first computer to successfully use a graphic user interface and mouse. The series was thought of by Jef Raskin, an Apple employee who envisioned a low-cost, user-friendly computer for the everyday customer. Macintosh was named after Raskin’s favorite type of apple. Jobs was working on his own Lisa computer during this time, but immediately took over the Macintosh project when the failure of Lisa was clear and the future of Macintosh was bright. See the 1984 Macintosh ad here.

Image from Quality in Print

By 1980s Jobs was still young and unexperienced. He made many marketing mistakes that greatly affected Apple sales. Jobs still lacked the discipline to run the company . Thus Jobs lured Sculley away with the pitch: ‘Do you want to sell sugar-water for the rest of your life or come with me & change the world?’

Jobs and Sculley during their 'friendlier' days

 Sculley was believed to be the perfect choice into bringing business success, stability and management know-how into the company. He raised the Macintosh price from US $1,995 to US $2,495, to use the extra money for advertising campaigns.

There was an internal power struggle in Apple–Sculley and Jobs regularly clashed. Sculley was traditional, but Jobs was more non-linear: he held meetings after midnight, and called new meetings early in the morning. In the end, the board of directors including Mike Markkula sided with Sculley. Jobs left Apple consequently, his pride in tatters.

The Era of Apple without Jobs

Come 1990s, the IBM PC was now dominating the operating system industry. Apple tried to battle the PC threat by introducing Quadra, Centris and Performa. The new Macintosh computers failed miserably, partly due to poor marketing, plus too many models introduced with minor differences in the tech specs. Aside from the computers, Apple released an early personal digital assistant or PDA (they coined that term, in fact) called the Newton. The venture failed, but it would later be the inspiration for future handheld devices such as the Pocket PC and Palm Pilot.

Image from Tony Olsen

By this time, Apple was considered ‘one of the worst managed companies in the industry’. John Sculley was then replaced by  Michael Spindler, and in turn by Gil Amelio. Stock value was low, and the company was losing billions of dollars. There was no visionary to lead them. How could Apple survive when the founders are no longer active?

Meanwhile, Jobs acquired Pixar, a visual effects and animation company. Soon afterwards he founded another company called NeXT. The computer venture did not succeed because of its high price, but it later became the basis for the Mac OS X. It also became the initial platform for Tim Berners-Lee with inventing the World Wide Web concept.

Apple’s Renaissance

Since Steve Jobs’ comeback, Apple regained its former enthusiastic spirit. From 1998 to 2000, their sales were slowly but surely rising. One of Jobs’ first moves as CEO was to develop the iMac, with the integrated CRT display and CPU in a clean, streamlined design. The computer was a huge success, selling one million units a year. There was a resurgence of Apple products and the company started to focus on the design and aesthetics of its products.

Later on, the company would introduce other innovative products like the iBook and the Power Mac G4. It also introduced the new operating system Mac OS X, which had been based on NeXT.

But the boom of Apple’s success today can be traced back to one gadget: the iPod. It was released on October 23, 2001 The iPod can store ’1,000 songs in your pocket’. It was Apple’s first venture in digital music players, a gamble that paid off so well that it led to other innovative products: the iPod Mini, Shuffle, Classic, Nano, and later the iPod Touch, iPhone and the iPad.

In fact, Apple revolutionized the music industry. It created a new music download service, the iTunes Store, with music downloads of only $0.99 per song or $9.99 per album. The iTunes Store was launched in 2003, and garnered 2,000,000 downloads in 2 weeks, all purchased on Mac computers. Apple later released a Windows version for iTunes, further expanding their market base.

The iTunes Store did not stop at that. They later provided free and paid videos and applications for downloads for the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

Today’s Apple products are simple, clean and minimalist. Everything is simplified: all the unnecessary features are taken out and only the essentials remain. And because of its style and simplicity, Apple created a huge fan following and has grown exponentially over the decade.

On May 26, 2010, the stock market of value of Apple overtook that of Microsoft. It was the only time in 20 years that Microsoft was lower than Apple, which would’ve seem ‘unimaginable’ 10 years ago.

On August 25, 2011, news went out that Steve Jobs had resigned as CEO of Apple, and would be succeeded by Tim Cook. On October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs passed away due to complications of pancreatic cancer.

The Bright Future of Apple

What are Apple’s most recent plans? The iPhone 4S, the Mac OS 5 and the iCloud, for starters. The iPhone 4S is quite exciting, especially the Siri feature. Siri lets you use your voice to command various functions: send messages, make calls, schedule meetings and more. Siri can recognize your voice, understand what you say, and can even talk back. If you don’t believe us, you can see the video here.

Before Jobs’ death, he recently unveiled Apple’s plans for their new headquarters in Cupertino. The modern and futuristic building allows room for 12,000 employees. It is environmentally friendly and will use renewable energy sources and trees will be abundant in the area. The company hopes to move to the new headquarters by 2015.

Indeed, the passing away of Jobs was too early and too unexpected. But the timing couldn’t have been more right–the iPhone and iPad were a huge success that it surpassed the company’s expectations in revenue and profit. Apple can finally stand on its own, ready to conquer the future without the help of Jobs’ regular involvement. After Jobs, Cook is now the CEO as design genius Jonathan Ive and marketing mastermind Phil Schiller, and they will continue to surprise and inspire us.

Spamming – Earliest Form of Online Advertising

The internet was intentionally created as a military and educational tool, and never intended for what it is now: a huge networking, communications and money-making machine.

Thus, the first ‘spam’ was not commercial in nature. The word ‘spam’ comes from a 1970s comedy of a British comedy ‘Monty Python’. In the sketch, a man and his wife are in a restaurant, but everything they ordered has spam on it. While trying to get an order without spam, Vikings from the background sing: ‘Spam, spam, spam. Lovely, spam. Wonderful spam!’

Photo by Wikipedia

You can view the episode here.

The phenomenon later influenced early internet users to flood forums with the word ‘spam’. Soon online marketers got the idea to overpost and flood Usenet groups and emails with junk mail, recounting the repeating the useless presence of spam in the Monty Python sketch.

The first spam email was ‘Arpanet’ on 1978, coming from Gary Thuerk of the Digital Equipment Corporation. The first commercial spam was by lawyers Laurence Canter & Martha Siegel, where they used bulk Usenet posting to promote their immigration law practices. Within a few years, marketers changed their medium of spamming from Usenet forums to e-mail, where it remains until this day. Over 90 million spam emails are sent everyday. 85% of our emails are actually spam. But it’s level of effectiveness in promoting or selling a product is very low—it now barely exists as a nuisance to all.

Photo by First-News

The Era of Banner Ads

The first online advertisement appeared on the web in 1994, prompting the beginning of the online advertising world. The first part was the period of experimentation by the advertisers and publishers, pioneering on ad formats and technology. In 1995, DoubleClick was launched, one of the first ad-serving technologies.

Photo by Ad Week

Photo above is one of the oldest online banner ads, dated October 25, 1994 (so sorry for the bad resolution). The advertiser is A&T, and the ad appeared on Hotwired. Hotwired also launched many online ad campaigns for Club Med, Volvo and MCI, and was eventually acquired by Lycos. Soon after Hewlett-Packard created one of the first interactive online ad, embedding a video arcade game ‘Pong’ into the ad.

From the start advertisers already know that online advertising is very different from traditional advertising. Early on they already did target market research and measurements. However, the media was largely misunderstood. It wasn’t until many years later that the effectiveness and the mechanics of the medium was understood.

Photo by Wiki

There are many forms of old school online ads apart from banner ads. This includes pop-up ads (photo shown above), pop-under ads, hover ads, takeover ads

Online advertising was at its peak in the late 1990s. Investors were dropping billions of dollars into dot com start-ups at an alarmingly fast rate. The internet was the new playing field, and investors fell in love with the novelty factor of it. They have high hopes for their investments–and it made some people very rich–on paper, at least.

by Banner Ad Museum

Back then, ads were in the banner format. Advertisers were required by the clients to provide the standard 468 x 60 px banner ad for their online advertising campaign, like the banner ads on the photo above. Soon, so thousands of entrepreneurs, investors and advertisers are pouring in–nobody wanted to get left behind this brand new money-making machine. In its hey day, it was a lucrative business: Yahoo! could charge up to US $30 to even US $100 to run these banner ads. At its height, internet spending has reached US $8.2 billion. The figure wouldn’t be reached again until 4 years after the dot com bubble burst.

However, banner ads are not effective; it is very expensive but the returns are low. Advertisers were set against the low effectiveness of ads, high prices, and the complex process of online ad auctions. The advertisers realized that the online banner ads pale in comparison to the effectivity of 30-second TV commercial or a full-page print ad.

Dot Com Bubble Burst

Photo by GDS Infographics

Mid-2000, the huge influx of money that created the online advertising bubble started to dry up. Companies now have no interest with online advertising and the online banner bubble burst happened. The stock market collapsed, resulting into a recession. The ‘bubble’ covered for five years from 1995 to 2000. From within that time frame the stock value rose steadily and rapidly at an astronomical rate. And then suddenly in just one day, the bubble burst–everything is gone in a flash.

NASDAQ peaked at 5,049 in March of 2000, and declined on October 2002 at 1,100. One one dot com company after another went bankrupt. Soon online advertising dollars had a dramatic fall of 32%, from US $8.2 billion to US $6.2 billion. As the market went sour, advertisers and agencies lost interest in using this unproven and unstable new medium.

Enter Google: The Era of Google Ads

After the bubble burst, advertising on the internet was in rapid decline except for search, because search engine technology has shown efficiency. Because of its ROI, Search engine market grew to US $2.3 billion in 2003. The search engine technology was highly efficient and dependable.

Google was, once upon a time, just a search engine. Google worked mainly on its functionality, perfecting the algorithm to produce the most appropriate results. Google drove plenty of traffic, but didn’t sell anything. But on the start of the millennium, 2000, Google AdWords was born. Google revolutionized online advertising–instead of using the banner ad format; which is the dominant advertising format of that time, they decided to sell through text ads. These ads are based on search engines, kept separate and on top or on the side of the main search results.

Why did Google’s text ads succeed and the banner ads did not? First of all, Google knew the weight of relevance. They introduced the click-through rate, creating a ranking algorithm to measure the advertisement’s relevance. Google only requires payment when the people click on them. Another stroke of genius from google is Page Rank.

Google did not create search engine or pay-per-click advertising–instead they focused on perfecting it. Google AdWords marked the New Growth Period of Online Advertising. Google has changed how we approach online advertising. Rather than mere selling or marketing, advertisers are now focusing in creating relevant content for consumers.

Ads make use of two different advertising model: the Pay-per-click and the Pay-per-impression. What’s the difference between the two? Pay-per-click requires advertisers to pay the host for every time the ad is clicked. Pay-per-impression is used to measure the cost and worth of the whole online marketing campaign. Both models are used to online ads such as text links, SEO marketing, web banners and e-mail advertising.

Photo by Searchlinqs

In search engines, advertisers bid on keyword terms and phrases relevant to their market. But with content sites, they use a fixed price for every click or impression. Pay-per-click model is perfect for bringing the targeted market into the website efficiently, while the Pay-per-impression is best for building brand recognition. Although these models are open to abuse through click fraud, Google and others have devised automated systems against corrupt advertisers or competitors.

Advertising through Social Media

If you haven’t heard of social media, then you’ve probably been living under a rock for the past five years. Social media, in its simplest terms, is a social tool for communications and networking. Rather than a web site merely providing you with information, social media sites are interactive; giving you the freedom to comment, rate and share information. There are four types of Social Media:

1. Social Networking Tools – Facebook, Twitter, Hi-5

2. Social News – Reddit, Digg Propeller

3. Social Photo & Video Sharing – Photobucket, Flickr, YouTube

4. Social Bookmarking – Del.icio.us, Simpy

One of the biggest advantages of social media advertising is proper targeting of market through the use of the users’ demographic information provided.

Photo by Singapore SEO

Social media advertising is now apparently more effective than traditional advertising! Some even go through lengths as to have a billboard with their own Twitter ID—such as Naked Pizza of New Orleans. Naked Pizza, reputedly the healthiest pizza in the world, erected a billboard prompting viewers to add them on Twitter. It’s not the first time Twitter is featured on a billboard, and surely not the last. It’s a smart marketing move, they will gain more followers and thus increase their marketing and advertising scope and awareness.

Photo by Wikimedia

Nowadays, it is now necessary for businesses to have a Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn page. Social media is the best thing online advertising could get: it’s free, it’s far and wide-reaching (500 million users) and it’s viral. The disadvantage is probably measuring effectivity of social media advertising, whether or not the number of ‘likes’, ‘friends’ or ‘follows’ could convert to actual sales.

Online Advertising as of Today

Since 2004 online advertising has recovered. Advertisers have seen (almost reluctantly) the importance of advertising online, and the number of hours consumer used on the internet. Now the web is used by many companies on their overall marketing campaign. Online ads make use of Flash and JavaScript to improve graphics and interactivity. Online advertising is now more sophisticated, the branding tools and technologies are diversified. There are now online blogs, social media, SEO marketing and more.

Viral marketing is now more popular, making use of video ads to market a product or brand. Old Spice (video still shown above) is one of the many companies that have gone into viral marketing. They posted numerous videos on YouTube starring Old Spice guy. It was a huge hit, having 30 million views to date and considered to be one of the most successful advertising campaigns in 2010. Isaiah Mustafah is now a household name. Other successful viral campaigns include Levi’s, Guitar Hero and Super Bowl. We see a regrowth in advertising on the web, which is now equals to the total internet spending.

This does not mean that Online Advertising has now been perfected. Annoying pop up and pop under ads still persist. One of the most annoying and interruptive of ad formats, the pre-roll ads are now used in YouTube. YouTube used to be a free site for uploading and viewing videos. But YouTube has problems generating income–so they added pre-roll ads, or commercials that run before a video that cannot be bypassed. So if you need to watch a 1 minute video you have to sit through a 30-second ad first. Most music videos uploaded on YouTube are now from VEVO, and not from actual users. Which means that there are ads on top, on the bottom and on the background of the page.

So will the internet’s bubble burst again? We are hopeful it won’t. Millions of people are now relying on the internet for advertising, promotions, business and employment. However, one thing is clear; we have learned a lot from the first bubble burst. Only time will tell.

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