20 Years of Media Temple - '98 to '02
In just a few short weeks, Media Temple will celebrate our 20th year as a company. My oh my, how the internet (and web hosting) has changed over the years. To commemorate this momentous occasion, we will be looking back at the history of Media Temple and the web (through our eyes), in five year blocks. As always, we thank each and every one of you for your support along the way.
Let’s take a trip down memory lane, way back to 1998…
1998 – Demian Sellfors leaves his job as an IT Director for a special effects studio in Los Angeles and starts hosting websites and providing online design services out of his own apartment. With a particular focus on services for the creative community, he names his company Media Temple.
1999 – Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker develop THE peer to peer file sharing network that changes the world. Napster officially launches in June 1999 and is an instant sensation. At its peak, Napster has 80 million users and dominates college campuses, utilizing nearly 60% of all their traffic. Radiohead’s then-latest album, Kid A gets massive publicity when several tracks leak onto Napster and debuts at #1 on the Billboard 200.
2000 – The millennium bug, Y2K, whatever you want to call it. Many of the programs made in the previous millenium represented four-digit years with only two digits, making 1998 indistinguishable from 2098 (or 1898, for that matter). While the media made a meal highlighting the possible dangers, the year 2000 starts with only minor blips and plenty of confetti.
2001 – Eager to invest in companies with “.com” in their name, investors had latched onto nearly every major tech company and IPO. Triggered by a looming recession in Japan, the Dot-com Bubble officially began in March 2000. With a Microsoft antitrust lawsuit, Pets.com bankruptcy, foolish advertising spending and the fear of September 11, the market takes a massive downturn. So much so that by 2002 the NASDAQ had shed 78% of its value, almost all of it in technology companies.
Early 2000s – Influential web design website/ web-zine Kaliber10000, or K10K, experiences some blips with their hosting. One of the most influential web design sites in the Web 1.0 era and often referred to as “the designer’s lunchbox”, Media Temple decides to reach out and offers to host their site for free, starting a company policy of catering to and reaching out to the web design and creative community.
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