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1. E-mail

   I remember an era during the 90’s when signing up for dozens of e-mail accounts was cool. Having so many e-mail accounts did nothing; sending an e-mail was still sending an e-mail. People back then had Hotmail [now called Windows Live Mail], Coldmail, Yahoo Mail, Mail.com, ICQ mail, and AOL mail. Now, people also have Gmail, self-hosted e-mails on personal domains, and more. Having more e-mail accounts was once considered a status. Now, even though many people do not realize that each existing and additional e-mail account can bring in its own unique benefits and downsides, more and more people still keep opening new e-mail accounts daily.

   Opening e-mail accounts is one of the longest lasting online trends ever, and e-mails are still one of the most widely used online tools, if not the most widely used online tool.

2. Guestbooks

   This trend also started more solidly in the 90’s, and continued all the way until the first year or so after 2000 under the original name “guestbook“, after which the name continued and continues to lose its popularity to other terms and concepts which have been derived from it. The term guestbook came from the actual guestbooks and the same term used to describe books at places like museums, where visitors could leave comments and remarks for others to see, whether anonymously or with any detail. Online, in many cases, the guestbook became more popular than e-mail during its strong day, not in number of users but in actual fame, among many people who had guestbooks like Bravenet Guestbooks.

   Guestbooks paved the way for public comments that we see on blogs today. Overall, Guestbooks are still around in their pure form and in some evolved forms like online blog comments. Original, pure guestbooks themselves have lost a lot of their original popularity. In many cases, guestbooks have lost popularity and ground to the very concepts that were derived from them, like comments and forums.

3. Online diaries, blogs and their variants

   Online diaries were the sites that brought blogs into existence. Technically, blogs are nothing more than diaries. Of course, the concept of blogging has been commercialized and now online diaries, the very sites that started it all, are considered immature and not worthy by many of the blogs that aim to make money through non-personal content. I know many people who had and have different online diaries for different reasons. Many people would simply abandon one online diary for the other, as the concept of deleting online accounts was not considered as important by many people in the mid-90’s.

   Among the other things that online diaries have evolved into, blogs are the new normal craze now. Many people get more excited about having a blog instead of getting excited of what they want to achieve and what they can achieve with a blog. Online diaries have evolved into many things including blogs, networking sites, and more. LiveJournal can probably be considered an evolved example of personal diaries.

   Blogs are thriving, and are continuing to get stronger everyday. According to Technorati, more than 70 millions online blogs existed as of April 2007.

4. Chat and instant messaging accounts

   Instant messaging started mainly during the 2nd half of the 90’s, and to this day is very popular. Instant messaging accounts allow people to instantly chat with someone online. In the 90’s, people used to lure their friends into using ICQ to keep in touch. Slowly, Yahoo Messenger, AIM and MSN Messenger [now called Windows Live Messenger] brought more popularity to the entire instant messaging arena.

   Instant messaging itself got popular because of Internet Relay Chat [IRC]. IRC allowed people to chat instantly and live, and thus allowed them to communicate a bit faster than e-mail, if the people involved were online and using an IRC program at the same time. IRC evolved into different kinds of instant messaging, and instant messaging itself evolved and divided into voice chats, webcam conferences, live chat via e-mail accounts such as in Gmail, and more. In some ways, IRC itself can be considered an evolution of e-mail.

   Instant messaging accounts and online chats are also thriving and getting more popular everyday. At this moment, for the first time in internet history, a growing number of online people are using instant messaging more than e-mail.

5. Networking sites, which include social networking sites

   The latest, youngest and biggest craze right now is to open a social networking account. MySpace, twitter, facebook, linkedin, Bebo and many other networking and social networking sites came out with a big bang at different times during the last 5 years. As of last week, MySpace had over 200 million accounts. If it is assumed that each of those 200 millions accounts is owned by a unique individual, 200 millions MySpace members are almost 1/3rd the size of the entire U.S. population. Many people have multiple accounts on different networking sites, and many people simply delete their online networking accounts so that they can start afresh with new accounts.

   Networking sites are very strong right now, attracting more and more members everyday. At the same time, networking sites are also in their infancy sage. Social networking sites are the least experienced players in the entire online arena compared to the other 4 types [e-mail, guest books, online diaries and instant messaging accounts]. In many ways, networking sites can be considered children of concepts like Yahoo Groups and the original Usenet groups, now part of Google groups.

   The trend of opening networking sites in huge numbers started recently, and is in full force right now, gaining more momentum. It is happening and evolving live as you read this.

There you have it. Listed above are 5 trends of opening up 5 different kinds of accounts. These 5 services have had a historical trend of attracting a crowd that focused hysterically on opening new accounts. E-mail is the oldest and longest running of such trends, and networking sites are the youngest of the bunch.

Can you think of any trend from the above or any other trend you yourself may have been, or are, involved in? Do you have any questions or comments? Please let me know.

Thanks for reading.

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1. Your webcam turns on automatically whenever your computer turns on. You have setup your computer and your instant messaging programs to automatically turn on the webcam in any chat or voice conversation, whether you’re sleeping, around the computer or away from home.
2. You try to turn off the lights in the shower, to make sure no one watches you. Yes, you can dry yourself with ease knowing that you aren’t being watched by someone on Skype, and when you realize you don’t have a webcam in the bathroom, you don’t laugh at the whole situation; you get mad. “Why don’t I have a webcam in the shower?“, you ask yourself.
3. Your webcam is powerful enough to move along with your body. If you walk in your room, your webcam follows you. If you bend down to scratch your body, your webcam captures all the action.
4. You don’t like to approve online friends who don’t have a webcam. If an online buddy does not have a webcam, you block them from your Yahoo buddy list. If a new person who wants to add you as their friend doesn’t have a webcam, you block them.
5. You dress up everyday to look good on the webcam. You take your clothes to the laundry so that you can look good on the webcam. When you go out to a shopping center or a mall, you dress in clothes that usually result in people staying at least 5 feet away from you, in a circle. That makes you feel powerful, and you don’t know why.
6. If you need some time alone from everyone, you turn the webcam away towards the wall. Sometimes you sit in a corner where the webcam’s view is blocked by some object. You never unplug the webcam during this process, by the way.
7. Your webcam has a name. You call your webcam “HAL” or “SAL“, and the next generation of webcams, in your view, should be able to talk.
8. The first thing you like to see in the morning is your webcam. People dream of waking up next to a beautiful person in the morning. You dream of waking up to a better webcam that is watching you in the morning.
9. Your webcam is your counselor. When you’re depressed or upset, you talk to the webcam as if you were talking to a qualified psychiatrist. Sometimes when you’re really upset, you also say to your webcam “Oh come on, don’t say that!“, knowing that the webcam is actually responding to you.
10. Your webcam is a baby of yours. If someone tries to fight with you or insult you in your computer room, you tell that person “Not here“, pointing to the webcam with your eyes. You don’t want your webcam to be exposed to indecent words.
11. Your webcam is your baby. If you ever sleep with someone in the computer room, you don’t remember that night as sleeping with Betsy, but as sleeping with Betsy and your webcam.
12. You don’t like anyone to talk about your webcam in a bad way. If anyone ever tells you that “your webcam sucks” or that your webcam is old, you get offended and block that person on your MSN Messenger account.
13. If anyone ever comes to your computer room and touches your webcam, you get surprised and ask that person “WHAT ARE YOU DOING??!!“ There is no word for a pedophile drooling after webcams, so you call that person a “webdophile” before kicking them out of the house. Since there is no law yet to protect webcams against a webdophile, you tell your webcam that same night “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.” You then curse all the webdophiles and cry yourself to sleep.
14. Breaking up with a webcam is always hard for you. If you find a better webcam than the one you already have, you sit down and look at the old webcam with teary eyes before unplugging it from your computer.

Those are the top signs that will show you the strength of your love for your webcam. What about you? How much do you like your webcam? Do you even have a webcam? Do you consider it a piece of technology or a piece of your heart?

As for me, I’ll get back to my webcam conference with someone Skype right now. Thank you for reading.

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