What the Internet Was Like in 2000
Cybercultural: Internet History 2025-10-08
Still from a 2000 Homestar Runner Flash toon; via Internet Archive.
After the hype and fear of Y2K (a.k.a. the Millenium bug) quickly faded in January 2000, the internet continued its mostly joyful rise in the culture. Sure, the dot-com bubble got pricked in March and then slowly deflated, but the web itself didn't stop growing.
Over 2000, "the Net" became an even more colorful, and increasingly social, place to hang out. Animated Flash pages were everywhere, bloggers were discovering and connecting to each other, social news sites like Slashdot and MetaFilter were rising in prominence. So despite the flagging economy, creativity in web design plus community in blogs and social news came to define the year 2000.
The Web Keeps Growing, Even as the Bubble Bursts
We have to start, though, with the dot-com bubble — because its deflation over 2000 was the first big culture shock of the internet.
On Tuesday, 11 January, 2000, the front page of The New York Times announced a corporate merger that seemed to confirm the internet’s cultural ascendency. “America Online Agrees to Buy Time Warner for $165 Billion,” the headline blared. Under the subhead “Internet Triumph,” the NYT noted that it “would be the biggest merger in history and the best evidence yet that old and new media are converging.”
The New York Times front page on 11 January 2000.
However, within a few months it was clear that the merger had actually signaled the end of dot-com exuberance. Reading tech news in mid-2000 felt suddenly gloomy — headlines about layoffs mixed with sites celebrating the wreckage, like Startupfailures.com, dotcomfailures.com, fuckedcompany.com and dotcomdoom.com.
Dotcom.Failures, August 2000; via Wayback Machine.
Flash Is Everywhere
However, exuberance in web design was far from finished in 2000. Flash was increasingly being used to give websites that cool factor. Flash 4, introduced in mid-1999, made animation and interactive intros easy. Splash pages were in vogue over 2000 — animated logos, “enter site” prompts, and loading bars. For instance, check out this trailer for the launch of BowieNet version 2.0, launched in May 2000:
Flash 5 was launched in August 2000, adding ActionScript — a scripting language modeled on JavaScript. This enabled web designers to do more than just animation. Soon interactive menus, games and ads began to appear across the web. It was the first time ordinary users expected motion and sound as part of a webpage’s design, a dramatic shift from the static sites of just a few years earlier.
Interactive buttons using ActionScript; via Flash ActionScript by William Sanders (2000).
Some websites didn't really need so much Flash (e.g. BowieNet), but others couldn't have operated otherwise. Homestar Runner was an example of the latter — it was a comedy animated web series created with Flash by Mike and Matt Chapman, and launched on New Year's Day 2000.
Homestar Runner became one of the most popular Flash sites on the web during the early-2000s. Indeed, the site is still around today, using the Flash emulator software Ruffle to run the videos (Flash was discontinued at the end of 2020 and is not supported in modern browsers).
Here's a Homestar Runner parody of Napster, from June 2000:
Blogging Community Forms
By the start of 2000, blogging was becoming a communal activity. One of its pioneers, Cameron Barrett, had a “Sites I Visit Often” list in his sidebar that had gotten longer over the past year and now included many weblogs. Although there wasn’t a word for this kind of list at the time, it would eventually become known as a “blogroll."
CamWorld, March 2000.
Jason Kottke, another influential early blogger, added a blogroll to his site around October after a redesign. He titled his list “Not Recommended At All,” in that ironic way many Gen Xers had back then. Kottke’s links to other bloggers served as a way for newbies to discover their community — clicking a link and then the ‘back’ button (and repeat again) was a good way to explore new weblogs.
Jason Kottke's blog, October 2000 — the first appearance of his blogroll.
Many blogs in this era were still used like personal journals. But they were also becoming increasingly well designed, with colourful layouts and creative use of graphics.
Good example of web design aesthetic in blogging circa 2000; by Dave Kellam.
This web of personal connections, in the form of blogging, was beginning to resemble a social network — even if no one used that term yet.
Social News Sites Expand
Slashdot was one of the original social news websites, where stories are posted by users and then ranked by popularity. The highest ranking stories in sites like Slashdot also tended to attract large comment threads; and those comments would also be ranked according to popularity.
Slashdot homepage, 20 June 2000; via Wayback Machine.
By 2000, Slashdot had become popular enough to be recognised by The Webby Awards, then in its fourth year of operation. In May 2000, Slashdot was awarded two Webbys: the “Peoples Voice” awards for “Community” and “Print & Zines.”
MetaFilter was another social news community gaining ground that year. It was a “community weblog” where anyone could post a link and start a conversation. The front page mixed web culture, politics, and oddities — one day a deep discussion about political protests, the next a link to an obscure Flash art project. What made MetaFilter special was its tone: smart, self-aware, and conversational rather than combative. By 2000, it had already attracted a dedicated community of writers, designers, and web enthusiasts who saw the internet as something worth curating and talking about.
MetaFilter, March 2000.
The Noise Around Napster
Napster was an internet sensation by May 2000. It had 10 million registered users and, according to research firm Webnoize, 73 percent of college students were using Napster at least monthly. Plus, the company had just closed a $15 million venture capital round with Hummer Winblad, which promptly installed one of its partners, Hank Barry, as Napster’s chief executive.
Napster website, 7 April 2000; via Wayback Machine.
But then, on June 12, the RIAA filed for a preliminary injunction to shut down Napster. In addition, it was fending off lawsuits from the rock band Metallica and rap artist Dr Dre.
Despite (or because of) all this unwanted legal attention, Napster’s user numbers continued to climb — it was approaching 50 million by the end of 2000. Online music had become a key part of internet culture thanks to Napster, although it wasn't yet clear if the company itself would get to reap the rewards.
NapsterMP3.com, one of many online music resources during 2000.
Conclusion
By the end of 2000, the web had settled into a strange dual state: the financial euphoria of the dot-com boom was gone, yet the culture of the web had never felt more alive.
Flash animations dazzled (and sometimes annoyed) visitors; bloggers linked and conversed across personal pages; Slashdot and MetaFilter fostered daily debates that made the internet feel like one big, messy conversation. Even as investors fled, users kept showing up — tinkering, posting, chatting, downloading, discovering.