New Media Timeline (2004)

December 16, 2004
Category: Archive
Previous: 2003 / Next: 2005
Intro and links to the other years in the timeline

SERVICES & TECH

  • The Facebook social networking site is started by Harvard University student
    Mark Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin on February 4, 2004.
    (Related: Company Timeline.)
  • The Flickr photo sharing Web site is launched by the Ludicorp company in February 2004. (Yahoo! will purchase Ludicorp and Flickr in March 2005.)
  • Google releases its free, advertising-supported Webmail service, Gmail, in March 2004.
  • “ICANN President Wants
    Group to Focus on Internet Basics    .”
    Computerworld, March 8, 2004.
  • “Sixty-three percent of e-mail users who responded to the Pew Internet & American Life survey said that the increase in junk e-mail has made them less trusting of e-mail as a communications tool, and more than three-quarters of respondents — 77 percent — said that spam makes being online unpleasant and annoying.” (Source: Washingtonpost.com special section on Spam, March 17, 2004.)
  • “Who Should Govern the Net?“
    CNET, March 18, 2004.

  • On April 29, 2004, Google Inc. announces that it has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of its Class A common stock.

  • The ethical challenges of social media are evident when a video of American civilian contractor, Nick Berg, being decapitated by terrorists, is distributed on the Web in May 2004.
  • “Worldwide shipments of mobile phones grew in the first quarter of 2004 compared with the same period last year, buoyed by strong demand for camera phones and color screens.” (Source: ZDNet News, May 6, 2004)

  • Competitors for the growing smart phone market include PalmOne, RIM (maker of the Blackberry), Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, HP, and Nokia.

  • The reporting in Iraq and Afghanistan proves the usefulness of satellite technology, but a reporter or photographer does not have to be thousands of miles from the newsroom before satellite transmissions become cost-effective in delivering breaking news. (Source: NAA’s Presstime, June 2004)
  • Internet podcasts become more popular and easier to find during 2004.
  • 84% of online Americans have used search engines. That translates into more than 107 million people who confirm that search engines have become an essential way for people to find information online. (Source: “Data Memo on Search Engines,” Pew Internet and American Life Project, Aug. 12, 2004.)
  • “The impact of the Internet — whether measured by the numbers of users or by the social change it is causing — cannot be overestimated. A technology that practically did not exist in American homes only a few years ago is now a standard feature in nearly two-thirds of homes.” (Source: USC Digital Future Report, Sep. 2004)

  • The FCC takes steps to encourage deployment of fiber optic broadband networks capable of delivering advanced data, video and voice service to the mass market by local telephone companies.

  • The Mozilla Firefox Web browser is officially released in November 2004. It is marketed as a secure alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser.

  • “Merriam-Webster’s Words of the Year 2004:
    Based on your online lookups, the #1 Word of the Year for 2004 was Blog.”
    Merriam-Webster Online, Nov. 2004.
  • On November 2, 2004, blogs and social networks post early exit polls from the presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry.
  • The Digg social news Web site is founded in December 2004. (Related: “A Brief History of Digg.” By Stephanie Marcus, Mashable, Aug. 25, 2010.)
  • “Should Your PC Be Your Telephone?“
    New York Times, Dec. 2, 2004.
  • On December 7, 2004, IBM announces that it is selling its PC business to China’s Lenovo Group. (IBM’s dominate role in the history of personal computers can be traced back to 1981 and the introduction of their first successful PC.)
  • “Google to Scan Famous Libraries.”
    BBC, Dec. 14, 2004.
  • The term Web 2.0 begins to be associated with a new generation of participatory Web applications, such wikis, social networking and blogs. The origin of the term goes back a few years, but Tim O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty’s names are often associated with it because of the O’Reilly publishing company’s Web 2.0 conferences.
Additional Resources

THE MEDIA

  • “Although the economics are still evolving, the Internet has now become a major source of news in America. In September 2003, over half of the people in the United States – 150 million – went online, a record for Web use. And half to two-thirds of those who go online use it at least some of the time to get news. Whether the new medium is replacing the old, however, at this point is less clear.” (Source: “The State of the News Media: Online Section.” Project for Excellence in Journalism, March 2004.)
  • “Significant numbers of Americans are turning to the Internet for news coverage and images they cannot find in the mainstream media. Over the last few months, war images have begun appearing online that were deemed too graphic and disturbing to be carried by the mainstream press. A significant number of Internet users, many of whom have explicitly gone looking for them, have seen these images online.”
    (Source: “The Internet as a Unique News Source.”
    Pew Internet & American
    Life Project, July 8, 2004.)
  • “We’re All Journalists Now.”
    Wired, August 11, 2004.
  • For the first time, bloggers are given press passes to the Democratic and Republican political conventions during the summer of 2004. The Democratic convention was the site of the first Associated Press blog.
  • In September 2004 the Poynter Institute, the Estlow Center for Journalism & New Media, and Eyetools release their results from the Eyetrack III study on Internet news-reading behavior.
    (Source: Eyetrack III, Poynter Online)
  • “Ceefax marks 30 years of service.” BBC, Sept. 22, 2004.
  • In September 2004 Internet blog posts point out discrepancies in documents from a CBS “60 Minutes II” report about George W. Bush’s service in the Air National Guard. The controversy surrounding this will lead to the early retirement of CBS News anchor Dan Rather.
  • The Media Bloggers Association (MBA) is founded in November 2004.
  • The Online Publishers Association (OPA) announces that for the first time ever, content surpassed communications to become the leading online activity as measured by share of time spent online. (Source: Results from the IAI or Internet Activity Index)
  • “Milestones in Online Journalism.”
    dotjournalism, Dec. 16, 2004.
  • “Bloggers, Citizen Media and Rather’s Fall — Little People Rise Up in 2004.”
    OJR, Dec. 21, 2004.
  • On December 26, 2004 user-generated video and photographs of the South Asia earthquake and Tsunami provide valuable content to traditional media outlets.

Awards