Top 10 Internet Success Stories

Many thought it to be impossible, but they never paid any heed to what other people had to say. They changed the way we used to see the internet and were responsible for the world wide revolution and in turn changing every aspect of our lives. The so called gold rush of the World Wide Web is said to have passed by but the amount of opportunity still being offered is still vast. Here are 10 best inspirational stories of people who have changed the world of Internet.

 

1. YouTube

It was in February 2005 that three people named Jawed Karim, Steve Chen, and Chad Hurley realized how difficult it was to upload and share videos online and thought of coming up with a solution. After applying various methods to make the videos more viral, it became popular with millions of videos being watched on YouTube. In 2006, Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.

 

2. Plentyoffish.com

It has become one of the top dating sites in the world. It was launched by its founder Markus Frind in 2003 as a part of a project for him regarding ASP.NET. From a humble beginning, Markus has made it into a site earning $10000 a day. The most surprising aspect remains that Markus was the sole owner of this site until recently.

 

3. Bebo

The success story of the famous social networking site, Bebo and its founders rank third on the list. It was in January 2005 that Michael and Xochi Birch launched it and immediately tasted success. At present, Bebo has over 40 million members, majority of them in United Kingdom. In 2008, AOL agreed to acquire Bebo for $850 million.

 

4. Zenhabits.com

The idea of creating Zenhabits.com was to help people with personality development using blogs. Its founder Leo Babauta launched it in January 2007. At present, it caters to over 100,000 of its subscribers needs. This venture has proved to be so successful that Leo has changed it into a full time job.

 

5. BlueLithium

Blue Lithium, launched in 2004 is an advertising network and was founded by Gurbaksh Chahal. It offers solutions to internet advertising .In 2007, Yahoo decided to acquire BlueLithium for a whopping $300million. At present, Gurbaksh continues his work on new projects which also includes a book.

 

6. JohnChow.com

JohnChow.com is a blog covering miscellaneous ramblings of a dot com mogul and was primarily launched to express his opinions on various topics. As he learned more about blogging and monetizing he shared the information with the readers which resulted in his site getting a huge popularity. At times, he earns as much as $40,000.

 

7. Last.fm

It is an internet radio station and music community. Initially launched in United Kingdom, it has now reached over 200 countries having more than 200 million active users. Apart from letting its users share their thoughts on music, it also lets them create and sell their own songs. In May 2007 it was acquired by CBS interactive for $280million.

 

8. Flicker

This site has become popular by letting its users share their photographs online. It was initially developed as a side project by Ludicorp and has changed into a site hosting over 2 billion pictures. It had become one of the top properties of yahoo after it was acquired in 2005 for a figure which is rumored to be somewhere over $40 million.

 

9. Weblogs, Inc

Most of its blogs have actually turned to be more familiar to people than this site which actually hosts them. It was launched in 2003 by Jason Calacanis and Brian Alvey. When this network was established, it included about 90 blogs. It grew fast and was acquired by AOL for $25 million dollars.

 

10. Zappos.com

This site was developed by Nick Swinmurn for the purpose of selling shoes online. Nick received help from another entrepreneur called Tony Hseih who decided to invest in the company. Though Zappos.com received a lot of competition it has managed to reach their revenues from nothing to $ 800 million and is expected to reach the $ 1 billion mark this year.

About The Author

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.