WEB OF ANOTHER SILK - Redux 10/04
Click here to toggle between the basic web image and one showing the survivors today.
Back in July 1995, when the e-commerce ecosystem first came to life, we presented a nascent web of the players and their interrelationships.
In January 1999, we updated our original image of the "web" of companies. During the three and a half years, some of the organizations had prospered while others slipped into oblivion.
Then the dotcom boom and bust happened, and the web grew up to become a mainstream channel and utility. Here is the original cast of players again, with their stories brought up to date as of October 2004. Click on the names to see what has become of each.
The big names, typically, are still around. The web has been incorporated into the way they do business like any other useful technology. Very few of the smaller players remained independent over the years. A few disappeared without a trace, but most of the time the assets - technologies, customers, brands - have been recycled into new organizations, often multiple times, through the turmoil of the last few years.
For many readers, named organizations may seem to sit in strange categories. More noticeably, major internet names are simply missing. Since the original map was based on the very earliest activities, participants' roles have changed, and many of the name players today had not yet appeared on the radar. Let us know if you would be interested in seeing a new map reflecting today's structure and players.
A side note on web publishing which has also evolved over the years:
Color-coded by niche and clustered around partnerships and alliances, the original diagram was a simple gif image 130kb in size. But in 1995, bandwidth was an issue. The web page carried a 2kb thumbnail linked to the full size image so readers didn't have to inadvertently wait for a long, slow download.
The 1997 update, based on a combination of javascript and cascading style sheets, was a svelte 38.3kb. Viewers could click on the organization names to pop up a smaller window and see what had become of each organization.
In this update, we have reverted to an image to show again the lines connecting the alliances. In the context of web conferencing and streaming video, a 800x500 gif is just not an issue. More interestingly, our update information has become richer - not just because of the longer interval between updates, but as a result of the greater amount of information online and the better search capabilities available.