User-generated content, a term that went mainstream in 2005 with the birth of YouTube, has increasingly come to dominate the media world. As users create more and more content, old distinctions are eroding between those who supply and those who consume. Remember: Time's Person of the Year in 2006 was "You." And you are either more powerful than ever - or helpless before forces no one can ever stop, trace, or counter.
"Every day I think about it," says Sree Sreenivasan, professor of digital media at Columbia Journalism School. "The world has changed in ways nobody could have imagined."
How it looked in 2001
Ten years ago, the Web was, well, texty. E-mail was
cool. The big Internet force was America Online, mailing everyone pesky free-trial CDs. Less than 3 percent of all retail sales took place online.
But change was afoot. Home access to fast, broadband Internet service was new - but as it became cheaper and easier to get, so did the reaches of the Web.
In March 2000, less than 5 percent of those surveyed had broadband service at home, says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project. As of May 2010, 66 percent had it. "With easier, faster access," Rainie says, "the Internet became more and more deeply woven into people's lives."
On Jan. 15, 2001, Wikipedia was born. The online community-edited encylopedia, one of the biggest, most active, best-linked sites on the Web, now has more than 35 million articles in 200 languages (3.5 million in English alone), and 80 million-plus visitors a day. Warts and all, Wikipedia symbolizes the faith many folks place in the originality and open access of the Web.
