In preparing for a few “end of year” type posts, I realized not only are we about to say goodbye to 2009, but to the decade in which domaining was basically born.
The 2000’s, what a decade it was.
Filled with huge, almost non-stop life changing news, events, and technologies
Even before the decade started, millions of people thought the world was going to come to a halt when computers hit 1.1.2000 (few original computer programs anticipated a year starting with something other than “19”) causing everything from power plants to traffic lights to banks to stop functioning.
Yes there were people, I even know one personally, that sold everything they had in anticipation of 1.1.2000, moved into the woods with there own generators, cash, food and ammo to wait out what they were sure was going to be the crisis caused by what came to be known as Y2K.
The decade then started out with the US presidential election being decided by “hanging chads”, with 24/7 TV coverage of among other things, vote counting, crowd protests, court hearings, with the whole mess winding up at the Supreme Court.
The next year, 2001 brought the worst attack on US Soil on 9/11, which lead to 2 wars, trillions of dollars spent fighting, and a priceless amount of lost human life.
During the decade we had mad cow disease, SARS, the Swine Flu, and a hurricane which destroyed a large part of New Orleans and the Mississippi gulf coast.
The stock market crashed not once but three times.
The tech bubble burst in 2000.
How much money was lost in the market is 2000?
Check out this chart from cnet.com:
After the 9/11 attacks, and in wake of the Enron scandal the market tanked again in 2001.
Of course last year, the Dow sank 34% the worst decline since 1931, as some of the biggest financial firms and banks seemed to go broke over night either going into bankruptcy like Lehman Brothers or sold for a fraction of their price just months earlier like Bear Stearns and Wachovia Bank.
Then there was a guy named Madoff who plead guilty to $65 Billion ponzi scheme.
Overall this decade has been the worst performing decade in the history of the stock market with the S&P 500 down over 22%.
This decade also gave rise to the real estate boom and saw the collapse of the real estate market when the housing bubble popped.
It’s probably safe to say that this decade saw more fortunes made and more fortunes lost than any previous one.
The decade also saw the birth of FaceBook, Twitter, Craigslist, the iPod, iPhone, and YouTube.com
Its the decade when the promises and power of the internet was fulfilled and realized.
2000 also marked the decade where the business of domaining was born.
Yes I know that many people registered and bought domains well before 2000, and GoTo.com the first real PPC company started in 1998.
But we all know that the business of domaining didn’t really get going until Google kicked in.
And while Google started search engine advertising in December 1999, it was not until October 2000 that the AdWords was introduced, and it wasn’t until 20o2 that Google introduced PPC.
Once Google’s PPC money flowed into domainers pockets, the business of acquiring, selling and monetizing domains got going as a real business model.
Personally, although I registered some domains as far back as 1997, I first registered MostWantedDomains.com on December 27, 1999 and it did not go live until 2000.
Who knows what the next decade is going to bring.
Judging from this one, all we can say for sure, are the world is very fluid and can literally change to some degree overnight.
And some of the most successful business that will exist on December 31, 2019 haven’t been started yet.
Now go to work.
A decade starts with year 1 so end of this decade will be 2010 not 2009 (first decade ever was years 1-10 not years 0-9 because there were no year “zero”)
Well you got a lot of calls to make because every media outlet in the world is taking about the end of the decade in 5 days.
“this decade ends on the very last day of 2009… “decade” means ten years..so 2000-2009 is exactly 10 years, meaning the first day of 2010 will be the start of a new decade….if you say it doesnt finish until 2010, its like saying th 1960s didnt begin until 1961, because the year 1960 would’ve marked the last year of the 1950’s? that’s rather ridiculous dont you think?
Source(s):
common sense and: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s” By: NewPower
Great post! From my iPhone while walking an art fair–& that’s remarkable too
Really liked that post!
It makes so much sense to think of where you are in the context of recent history as well as the future..most still only see what is right before them or what they are told by the MSM.
have a great new year’s!
Where is your friend today who was hiding out in the woods in late 99′? 🙂
Belmassio
I have no idea.
He owned a real estate agency in NC, sold it cheap, quick and ran.
I never heard from him again.
Sounds like he went “Off the Grid”…..LOL. 🙂
In the year 2000 I own nothing…no asset, nothing to brag about …but now in the year 2009, I got more $$$$$ than I can ever imagine.
Thank you whoever invented Domains!!!
Thank You my lord Internet.
Right on the money. Your laser sharp perspective makes this great wrap-up of the 2000’s a pleasure to read!
@Soundly Reasoned, going by your reasoning, the first decade was 9 years only.
“Craigslist”
Craigslist was around in 1999. I used in in the summer of 1999 to get a job. And I’m pretty sure it was around before then…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist says 1995 or 1996 (depending on whether you count the original mailing list or the website.)
-Erica
I guess it was a rough decade.. Who would have thought? I enjoyed your post Mike!
.
now, the domains and websites markets are smaller, but stronger
.
“The domains and websites markets are smaller”
Where did you come up with that?
“Where did you come up with that?”
“smaller” compared with the internet-bubble era…
I remember that just-born zero-revenues sites were evaluated (and, often, SOLD!) hundreds million$ each and (e.g.) the (later sold for $12M) sex.com domain was commonly evaluated ONE BILLION
.
Y2K was total hoax, even 386 (heavily outdated and not sufficient for anything in 2000) have bios atleast 2040 and all old applications took every time/date data from bios . 😉
—“decade” means ten years..so 2000-2009 is exactly 10 years—-
With this “logic” some decade ends every day then…for example 7.6. 2009 ended a decade from 8.6. 1999
However if decade/century/millenium is supposed to be some round number, then as long as you are OK that
first decade AD lasted 9 years
first century AD lasted 99 years
first millenium AD lasted 999 years
Then a decade end it is
Otherwise decade ends next year, new millenium and new century started in 2001. If everyone keeps repeating a nonsense it does not make it true…
Any predictions on how the next decade will be in terms of domaining? I am getting the sad feeling that the Internet as a platform will eventually migrate to an ‘apps’ type interface (thanks in part to the iPhone and possibly Android) and folks won’t be using domain names very much. Of course I hope this doesn’t end up to be the case. Any thoughts?
Steve
Yup got plenty of thoughts and 2 posts coming on this in the coming days.
Good stuff! Looking forward to them.
ps – no adult domain auctions in sight these days I notice. Internext appears to have dropped it from the January event =(
You’re an idiot.
Your third paragraph has no ending punctuation.
“There” refers to a relative location, not a plural group of people, so you meant to say “their” in paragraph 5.
I can’t even read any farther than that because you’ve proven that you know relatively nothing about the English language. Even the average 2nd grader should be able to correct those errors.