There can be little doubt about the popularity of YouTube. Just about everybody has visited YouTube at least once or twice, and some of us pay daily (hourly?) visits to watch our favorite videos or surf for new videos. What did we do with our time on the Internet before YouTube, though? The infographic below, created by our friends at YouTube Downloader, lays out some of the milestones along the way to that grand time waster, YouTube.
Since it first came online, we’ve looked to the Internet to connect with others and find entertainment. Before we started being able to watch our friends’ videos, we would chat with our friends online. A number of sources allowed us to do that, even before Facebook came around in 2005. We could log onto a chat room on IRC, or use AOL Chat rooms to find new and old friends to hang out with online.
Some of us would play roleplaying games online. For many years, multiplayer dungeons (called MUSHes) were a great source of fun for gamers all over the world. You’d never believe it today, but we typed everything we wanted to say or do, and that was how we played the game! Later, we’d see the advent of graphic roleplaying games that were online and had huge followings, like Ever Quest and later Worlds of Warcraft.
These pastimes still kick around a bit, but they aren’t nearly as popular now as they were before YouTube. These days, the online community checks Facebook, then goes to YouTube to watch videos and post those videos on Facebook. It might be hard to believe there was life before YouTube, but the infographic below will show you a few more of the things we did before we could watch any kind of video imaginable on our computers, phones, or tablets.
