The Bubble and People Power

Download: The True Story of the Internet continued with "Bubble" which told the stories of the dot-com boom and featured the success stories of eBay and Amazon. The video discussed how the spread of computers and the Internet was ripe for an e-commerce boom. The missing link was figuring out public key cryptography, which made it safe for consumers to purchase products over the Internet. Amazon found its niche of selling books by founder Jeff Bezos, tabulating in spreadsheets and gathering data about what would be the most popular products to sell over the Internet. eBay Founder, Pierre Omidyar's approach was less calculated as he simply liked the idea of setting up public auctions for consumers to sell their goods, which were largely dominated by collectibles.

The key to what made these websites successful was that they empowered their customers by giving them the tools they needed to be informed consumers, selling their own products and also leaving their own uncensored feedback for products, whether positive or negative. This strategy worked for the successful sites like eBay and Amazon because their first priority was happy customers. Even if they weren't happy with a product or service they had the ability to leave feedback, which gave them a sense of empowerment.

As new web companies were launched during what would be called the bubble, many failed even though banks recommended investment in the start-up companies in an effort to gain investors. However, the companies like eBay and Amazon that were successful set a new precedence for the future of internet start-ups.The power was now in the hands of the consumer, and the brick and mortar companies were forced to take the web seriously.

The Bubble also set the stage for a new era in telecommunications. The rapid growth of internet companies meant that fiber optics technology and telecommunications infrastructure had to grow as well, and fast. When the bubble burst and many web start-ups went under, the upside was that we were left with the infrastructure that set the foundation to make it fast and easy to communicate over the internet, which would also open the doors to the next Web 2.0 era.

The next video, People Power, discussed the implications of Web 2.0, file sharing and social media as it began with the creation of Napster. This video was interesting to watch since social media continues to develop today. Viewing it from its controversial beginnings as file sharing and illegally downloading music is interesting to see how a goal to obtain loads of free music turned into sharing common interests with friends and people over the web in a way that brings people closer together. Other social media have tried to capture this sharing between friends concept, but none has dominated like Facebook. However, when this video ended, MySpace was currently in the lead and there was no Twitter, so it's easy to see there's no telling what's on the horizon for the next big thing.