Dot Com to Dot Bomb

During last class the conversation that we were hit with was the "Dot Com to Dot Bomb". It's a very intruiging topic that tends to be kind of silent but in a BIG way. I personally think that the average person doesn't know how much this evolution into the Internet (the virtual world) is slowly invading how we function as a society. So the Dot Com to Dot Bomb begins with the birth of the internet. The talk about how not too long ago 18.8kps, 26.4kps, 28.8 kps, 56k, was what the internet was born on. There really wasn't much need for a quicker connectivity, because everything was basically text-based. Around 1996 as companies began understanding this so called "internet" better, they found this interest in creations that helped people in their daily lives, such as the ROBOTIC ARM, or the webcams that watch the coffee pots. [ I found it rather amusing that people would really have a webcam on their coffee pots to see if they should even get up to get coffee or not. ] Not too long after.. BOOM. the internet blows up, companies such as Netscape go public and immediately becomes one of the most valuable companies in the world. For a company at that time to have a public value of 1 BILLION dollars was insane.

In 1996 the BOOM was the beginning of rising companies such as Yahoo!, Amazon.com, and USweb. As always with BOOM's comes the downfall.. AOL takes charge of its opponents and becomes the only company that kept it web-based. In 1998 the powerful AOL buys CompuServ, and it seemed like the sky was the limit for AOL. In 1999, Yahoo bought Broadcast.com for 5.7 Billion dollars, making Mark Cuban a BILLIONAIRE.. for a company that wasn't worth NEARLY that amount. [this just gives us a clue at the insanity that went on during this Dot Com boom.] In 2000.. the anticipated BUST happens, and all these once well-organized companies like Pets.com goes crashing and burning. This was the start of the decline in the stock market.. they turned right when they should have turned left.
As people start to grow accustom to what the internet is, and how it functions, businesses begin to gain some hope. Slowly crawling out of their holes in 2002, companies like Ebay, Yahoo, Amazon, E-trade, have begun to make strides.

Conclusion:
AOL hasn't caught on even till today. The one time powerhouse is slowly becoming a business with no hope. It's only a matter of time before they either realize what they are doing wrong... or just die off completely... AOL will now stand for America Offline.
Random: 1.6% of facebook was bought for 250 million dollars... and its total value is about 15 BILLION dollars?.. We don't know what this worlds doing these days, but lets hope Microsoft has some big plans with something that may bring in little to no profit. >.<