Please Help Me With My Fantasy

In Off-Topic | 11 comments | permalink

Recently I have been having a regular day dream… well, it is more like fantasy.

It goes like this: I fantasize that I go back in a time machine to the year 1990, I am a child again, but I have kept all my knowledge of the Internet.

Here is the thing… for some reason I am only allowed to choose one idea to implement. What would you do? Bearing in mind you have seen the future.

By the way, buying domain names is not allowed, you have to create an actual site.

The obvious choice would be to create Google or Yahoo, but how would you do that? Do you know the inner workings of a search engine?

Then I thought about Digg.com, but I am not sure how effective it would be in the 90′s, also, you would get people copying you very early on.

It is the fantasy that seems to get more complex the more you think about it.

So what would you do if you could go back in time 17 years and you had to create one site?… bearing in mind that you would retain your current knowledge of the net.

Also, here is a weird thing: Imagine if you bought the Google.com domain in 1990, then the Google guys did their thing and noticed that Google was taken, so instead they used Googol.com, how weird would it be to own Google.com yet the world would perceive it to be almost worthless. Weird!

arrgggghhhhh, damn you Britney Spears… things were a lot easier when I just fantasized about her.

Dean

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11 COMMENTS

  • marian

    What about MySpace in the 90′s?

    Most of the stuff that’s top notch now would not have worked at all in another situation and era. All the popular examples are, after all, products of our current sociocultural “condition” (no better term, sry).

    Just imagine MySpace (or others in that niche) without the emo stuff, unknown bands and the mp3 format! And without “widespread basic html and design knowledge”. *coughs*

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  • marian

    p.s. Why the heck Britney? I’d most definitely have a hard time fantasizing about her.

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  • http://deanhunt.com Dean Hunt

    Marian, I am referring the the Britney from 2000.

    Myspace would be a good choice, but would you have the budget to do it? Also, there is a lot of programming involved. Would you be able to explain it to a developer in enough detail?

    Remember, you can’t say “Mr Developer, I want a clone of Myspace”, he will say “Myspace???”

    arrgghhh, I am even more confused now.

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  • http://reducingcarbonfootprint.co.uk Steve

    I would ignore the social sites, after all, six degrees was around way back then, and was too early. There was also something like friendsreunited back then, but again too soon.

    I would do either:

    1. Create an auction site using what knowledge you had of how ebay worked out

    2. Create an online PPC advert management and placment system. Think Google ads or Overture before they were there.

    3. Create a domain name ideas and sales site. Tiny margins, huge volume.

    4. Create hotmail

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  • http://deanhunt.com Dean Hunt

    Let’s spice things up… your max budget is $2,000 ;-=

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  • marian

    Good point there. The thing then is that mySpace wasn’t quite as complex and branching as it is now, was it? mySpace might even have been based on WP or TYPO3 in the beginning if set up by me. Who knows.

    What about flickr in the 90′s?

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  • http://deanhunt.com Dean Hunt

    Flickr could be good, but would hosting have been too high in the 90′s?

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  • marian

    That’s just one thing. Cameras weren’t so able back then, so there would have been another obstacle.

    No good perspectives :D

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  • http://deanhunt.com Dean Hunt

    Good point ref the cameras.

    I told you it was harder than it sounds.

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  • Chuck

    Duh! Wonderboy. Start out with a porn site–maybe even an affiliate site. Work it awhile by going to the forums.
    Meet Woody Maxim there and then you and he would create the King Kong of all porn sites. Maybe even instead of the world wide web it would be wwp.(World wide porn.)

    Actually thats just mindless drivel. The point to take from this type of brainstorming is that

    1)technology is changing. As it changes
    2)it creates new opportunities which creative minds
    3)turn into imaginative new businesses.

    Most of the ones you are talking about here came about and became very big in a relatively short amount of time.

    So you have about 13 years to let your subconscious come up with a good idea. Make it huge and then in 17 years from now some free thinking entreprenuerial
    spirit will be wondering the same thing about your site.

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  • http://www.hotcosta.com computergenius

    It might be boring, but I think that I would invent Amazon.

    In those days, there were no big bookshops in many places, and people could understand the concept of “books by post”, because some companies already did it.

    But I would sell it, and move on to something more interesting as soon as I could…

    Hey, here’s me apologising for becoming a millionaire!

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