Second preliminary session of the World Summit Information Society, plenary meeting, 18–25 February 2005, UN building, Geneva, Switzerland .
Internet history timeline
Early research and development:
Merging the networks and creating the Internet:
Commercialization, privatization, broader access leads to the modern Internet:
Examples of Internet services:
1989 (1989 ) : AOL dial-up service provider, email, instant messaging, and web browser
1990 (1990 ) : IMDb Internet movie database
1994 (1994 ) : Yahoo! web directory
1995 (1995 ) : Amazon online retailer
1995 (1995 ) : eBay online auction and shopping
1995 (1995 ) : Craigslist classified advertisements
1995 (1995 ) : AltaVista search engine
1996 (1996 ) : Outlook (formerly Hotmail) free web-based e-mail
1996 (1996 ) : RankDex search engine
1997 (1997 ) : Google Search
1997 (1997 ) : Babel Fish automatic translation
1998 (1998 ) : Yahoo Groups (formerly Yahoo! Clubs)
1998 (1998 ) : PayPal Internet payment system
1998 (1998 ) : Rotten Tomatoes review aggregator
1999 (1999 ) : 2ch Anonymous textboard
1999 (1999 ) : i-mode mobile internet service
1999 (1999 ) : Napster peer-to-peer file sharing
2000 (2000 ) : Baidu search engine
2001 (2001 ) : 2chan Anonymous imageboard
2001 (2001 ) : BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing
2001 (2001 ) : Wikipedia , the free encyclopedia
2003 (2003 ) : LinkedIn business networking
2003 (2003 ) : Myspace social networking site
2003 (2003 ) : Skype Internet voice calls
2003 (2003 ) : iTunes Store
2003 (2003 ) : 4chan Anonymous imageboard
2003 (2003 ) : The Pirate Bay , torrent file host
2004 (2004 ) : Facebook social networking site
2004 (2004 ) : Podcast media file series
2004 (2004 ) : Flickr image hosting
2005 (2005 ) : YouTube video sharing
2005 (2005 ) : Reddit link voting
2005 (2005 ) : Google Earth virtual globe
2006 (2006 ) : Twitter microblogging
2007 (2007 ) : WikiLeaks anonymous news and information leaks
2007 (2007 ) : Google Street View
2007 (2007 ) : Kindle , e-reader and virtual bookshop
2008 (2008 ) : Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
2008 (2008 ) : Dropbox cloud-based file hosting
2008 (2008 ) : Encyclopedia of Life , a collaborative encyclopedia intended to document all living species
2008 (2008 ) : Spotify , a DRM-based music streaming service
2009 (2009 ) : Bing search engine
2009 (2009 ) : Google Docs , Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, form, and data storage service
2009 (2009 ) : Kickstarter , a threshold pledge system
2009 (2009 ) : Bitcoin , a digital currency
2010 (2010 ) : Instagram , photo sharing and social networking
2011 (2011 ) : Google+ , social networking
2011 (2011 ) : Snapchat , photo sharing
2012 (2012 ) : Coursera , massive open online courses
2016 (2016 ) : TikTok , video sharing and social networking
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS ) was a two-phase United Nations-sponsored summit on information, communication and, in broad terms, the information society that took place in 2003 in Geneva and in 2005 in Tunis . WSIS Forums have taken place periodically since then. One of the Summit's chief aims is to bridge the global digital divide separating rich countries from poor countries by increasing internet accessibility in the developing world. The conferences established 17 May as World Information Society Day .
The WSIS+10 Process marked the ten-year milestone since the 2005 Summit. In 2015, the stocktaking process culminated with a High-Level meeting of the UN General Assembly on 15 and 16 December in New York .[ 1] A WSIS+20 review will take place in 2025.[ 2]