By mid-1994, there were 2,738 websites, according to a study by
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Matthew Gray. It was announced in November 1993 by
Martijn Koster and went online in May 1994, but was short-lived.
Allied Artists Entertainment Group The movie studio and film distribution company Allied Artists Entertainment Group (now
Allied Artists International), registered
URLs in 1993 and launched its website in 1994.
American Marketing Association A group of marketing professors created a website for the
American Marketing Association professional association in 1994. The website offered general marketing news for marketers and marketing professors. Approximately a year later, the site was moved to www.ama.org, where it remains.
Amnesty International Canada The International Secretariat and the Computer Communications Working Group of
Amnesty International Canada created a human rights website in 1994. It still operates at amnesty.ca.
Apple Inc. Apple Inc. created apple.com, an example of an early corporate site, using the
NCSA Mosaic browser. Snapshots of early versions of this site are available through the
Version Museum.
Art.Net Lile Elam created
Art.Net or
Art on the Net in June 1994 to showcase the artwork of
San Francisco Bay Area artists as well as international artists. It offered free linkage and hosted extensive links to other artists' sites. This is not to be confused with
Artnet, a
publicly traded art market website based in New York City.
Art Crimes Susan Farrell of the Art Crimes Gallery launched the website
Art Crimes in September 1994. It was the first
graffiti art website and originally served as an archive of photos from around the world. It became an important academic resource as well as a thriving online community. Its early content was moved to the
Graffiti Archives in August 2015.
The Amazing FishCam Lou Montulli created
The Amazing FishCam which provided a continuous
web feed of an
aquarium in the
Netscape headquarters, via a
webcam. This was the second live camera broadcast on the Web. According to a contemporaneous article by
The Economist, "In its audacious uselessness—and that of thousands of ego trips like it—lie the seeds of the Internet revolution." It went offline in the summer of 2007, showing an empty tank on the website. It was later moved to a new site showing Montulli's new tank at the offices of
Zetta, but has since ceased operations.
Automatic Complaint-Letter Generator Scott Pakin created the
Automatic Complaint-Letter Generator in April 1994. The site allows users to specify the name of the individual or company that the complaint is directed toward, as well as the number of paragraphs the complaint will have. After submitting the data, the computer generates sentences that are composed of arbitrary verbs, nouns, and adjectives. This website is still active at www.pakin.org/complaint.
The Barney Fun Page An early online game or
meme, The Barney Fun Page allows users to attack a crude drawing of
Barney the Dinosaur with icons representing a knife, gun, and other weapons. Hosted originally on a
University of Alberta computer system in October 1994, it moved to impressive.net in 1996, where it is still available. It is an example of
anti-Barney humor.
BBC Online BBC Online started as
BBCi in April 1994 with some regional information and content from the
Open University Production Centre (OUPC). By September, it launched the first commercial service, providing transcription services via an
FTP server. At its peak, it had 122 accounts, including
FBI offices from around the world, taking daily updates from twelve feeds. It is still active at bbc.com.
Bianca's Smut Shack ''Bianca's Smut Shack'' was an early web-based
chatroom and
online community known for raucous free speech and
deviant behavior.
Birmingham City Council Birmingham City Council (England) created an early local government site,
Birmingham Assist, that was initially hosted by the Computer Science Department at the
University of Birmingham. It was renamed in 1996 and still functions at https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/.
Britannica Online Encyclopaedia Britannica launched
Britannica Online as a subscription service in 1994. It was the first Internet-based encyclopedia.
Chabad.org Chabad.org was the first "
ask the rabbi" website. It was launched by
Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Kazen as an outgrowth of earlier discussion groups on
FidoNet, which dated back to 1988.
CitySites CitySites, the first "City Site" web development company, created this website in 1994 to advertise businesses and review music and art events in the
San Francisco Bay Area.
CitySites was featured in
Interactive Week Magazine in 1997. Founder
Darrow Boggiano still operates CitySites.
Classical MIDI Archives Pierre R. Schwob founded
Classical MIDI Archives in 1994 as an online digital music archive featuring MIDI sequences of classical music for free. It became
Classical Archives in August 2000 and now offers commercial label recordings for downloading and streaming. Its Cool Site of the Year Award, also known as the
Webby Awards, became a coveted prize for
Silicon Alley start-ups. It is no longer active.
CORDIS CORDIS, an anacronym for the Community Research & Development Information Service, was the
European Commission's first permanent website. Launched on
ESPRIT day in November 1994 as www.cordis.lu, it provided a
repository of EU-funded research projects. It is still online at cordis.europa.eu/.
Dianne Feinstein Dianne Feinstein used a website for her
United States Senate campaign, becoming the first senatorial candidate to have utilized a website.
The Economist The Economist created its website in early 1994. One of the magazine's correspondents,
Kenneth Cukier, paid $120 ($ adjusted for inflation) to create the website which featured a
web portal with search tools such as
Archie,
Gopher,
Jughead,
Veronica, and
WAIS. It is still live today at www.economist.com/.
e-democracy e-democracy went online in 1994 to help civic organizations in Minnesota. It would distribute information online and then hold the first online debates ever for US Gubernatorial and Senatorial candidates in October 1994.
Einet Galaxy Einet Galaxy was one of the first searchable
web catalogs. It passed through several commercial owners and is now run by Logika Corporation as gallexy.einet.
FogCam! Jeff Schwartz and Dan Wong launched
FogCam! in July 1994 at
San Francisco State University to track changes in the local weather.
Flags of the World Flags of the World is the Internet's largest website devoted to
vexillology. It was established by
Giuseppe Bottasini in 1994 and is still live as www.crwflags.com.
GeneNetwork GeneNetwork launched in January 1994 and was the first website on biomedical research and the earliest
Uniform Resource Locator (URL) in
PubMed. It was initially known as the
Portable Dictionary of the Mouse Genome and then as
WebQTL. This genetics site has been funded continuously by the
National Institutes of Health and the
University of Tennessee-
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor's Chair to RW Williams.
HM Treasury HM Treasury, the United Kingdom government department, formed a website in 1994. It is live at www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-treasury.
Horror Horror is the earliest website dedicated to horror movies and horror book/comic reviews and news. It is still live at www.horror.com/.
HotWired HotWired is the website of
Wired magazine and features unique and innovative online content. It is noteworthy as the home of the first
banner ads, for
Zima and
AT&T.
IBM IBM launched one of the early corporate websites in 1994. It is live at www.ibm.com/us-en.
Innerviews Innerviews was the first online music magazine. It was launched by music journalist
Anil Prasad and is accessible at
Innerviews: Music Without Borders The Irish Times In 1994
, The Irish Times became the first newspaper in
Ireland to have a website. The newspaper moved to
ireland.com in 1999 and
irishtimes.com in 2008.
Lawinfo Lawinfo is an early legal website and provides public access to pre-qualified, pre-screened attorneys, and free legal resources. It is still live at www.lawinfo.com/.
Legislative Information System Virginia's
Legislative Information System (LIS) was developed by the Division of Legislative Automated Systems (dlas) and was launched at leg1.state.va.us. It remains active as lis.virginia.gov but is also viewable in its original format at
LIS Classic.
Links from the Underground Justin Hall's
Links from the Underground is one of the earliest examples of personal
weblogging. It is still available at www.links.net/vita/web/start/.
Literary Kicks Literary Kicks was an early literary website about the
Beat Generation,
spoken word poetry, and alternative literary scenes. This
digital library was launched by Levi Asher on July 23, 1994, and is still active at litkicks.com/.
Lycos Lycos was an early web
search engine. It was created by Robin Sloan Bechtel of
Capitol Records as a tie-in to a record promotion and featured news updates and a chatroom.
Museum of Bad Art Museum of Bad Art in
Boston, Massachusetts created a
virtual museum in 1994. It is still live at nineplanets.org/.
Nando.net Nando.net was the online presence of the
Raleigh, North Carolina
News & Observer and was one of the first newspaper websites.
NetBoy NetBoy is a popular
early webcomic created by
Stafford Huyler. It started publishing in May 1994. It is available online at www.netboy.com/.
Netrek Netrek is one of the first sites dedicated to multi-user video-game programming on the Internet. It was maintained at obsidian.math.Arizona.edu and is now defunct.
Pathfinder.com Pathfinder.com was one of the first
web portals, created by
Time Warner to link its various sites. Resources and discussions were initially hosted on a
Brown University server before they were transferred to a dedicated machine in June 1994, after which the Phish.net website was launched.
PizzaNet Pizza Hut started the website,
PizzaNet, which allowed people in
Santa Cruz, California to order
pizza over the Web. It started with two employees, and the company's first online order was placed by an
Apple employee. It pre-dates
Amazon.com.
PrimePages PrimePages is a website about
prime numbers originally created by Chris Caldwell at the
University of Tennessee at Martin. The site maintains a fairly comprehensive database of prime numbers. Caldwell hosted it from 1994 to 2023, at which point it was migrated to t5k.org to be managed by Reginald McLean and Rytis Slatkevičius.
Purple.com Launching on August 31, 1994,
Purple.com is the first known
single-serving site. It consisted of just a purple background. It was defunct by November 2017.
Radio Prague Radio Prague is the official international
broadcasting station of the
Czech Republic. It was an early media entity on the web and included transcripts of its news broadcasts and other current affairs content in five languages. Still active at english.radio.cz/.
Ren and Stimpy Information A
fan site for the cartoon
The Ren & Stimpy Show, which was launched in 1994 and was one of the first websites about an animated series.
Senator Edward Kennedy The first website for a
United States Senator was officially announced for
Senator Edward Kennedy on June 2, 1994. The site remains active.
Saccharomyces Genome Database Saccharomyces Genome Database is a
National Institute of Health-funded research project on the Web. It provides curation of all published results on budding yeast (aka. bakers, brewers, and wine yeast) genes and their products. Its current URL is yeastgenome.org.
Sex.com The website
Sex.com was the subject of a twelve-year legal battle that established parameters of domain ownership.
The Skeptic's Dictionary ''
The Skeptic's Dictionary'' at /www.skepdic.com/ was launched in 1994 and is still active. It features definitions, arguments, and essays on topics ranging from acupuncture to zombies.
The Simpsons Archive The Simpsons Archive was the first
fan site for
The Simpsons television show.
Sirius Connections Sirius Connections was the first Internet service provider in the
San Francisco Bay Area. Its owner,
Arman Kahalili, gave novice website creators technical assistance to get them started on-site building and expanding
code that was used in later versions of
HTML and other web technology.
Snopes Snopes, the fact-checking website, was created by David and Barbara Mikkelson in 1994. It was an early
online encyclopedia focused on urban legends and rumors. It started as the personal website of
Greg Galcik.
Telegraph.co.uk Telegraph.co.uk or
The Electronic Telegraph is the website of the British newspaper,
The Daily Telegraph. It launched in November 1994
United States Department of State The
United States Department of State's
Bureau of Public Affairs launched a
text Gopher website via the
Federal Depository Library at the
University of Illinois Chicago in the fall of 1994. The website was later relaunched in January 1995.
VeloNews New South Network Service developed the first sports news site for cycling magazine
VeloNews. It was originally called
VeloNews Tour de France and was created to cover the
Tour de France from June 30 to July 30, 1994.
VirtuMall Dan Housman and Ron Schmelzer created
VirtuMall in 1994. when they were fraternity brothers and roommates at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This website pioneered
shopping cart technology and
credit card payments sent via
fax to mail order catalogs. It was also the first pooled-traffic site, helping foster standards for security. One of the first virtual "tenants" was
Hickory Farms. The website's name changed to ChannelWave and was sold to Quick Commerce sometime after 1998. It is perhaps the first site that showcased bad or eccentric websites and helped distribute early minor
Internet memes and phenomena. It is now defunct.
WebCrawler WebCrawler is an early search engine for the Web and the first with full-text searching.
Webmedia Webmedia is a London-based website design company founded by
Steve Bowbrick and
Ivan Pope. The domain name webmedia.com was registered on October 27, 1994. The website was launched in November 1994.
Whitehouse.gov Whitehouse.gov is the official website of the
White House. The
Clinton administration launched it on October 20, 1994 to the public.
World-Wide Web Worm The
World-Wide Web Worm (WWWW) was one of the first search engines for the World-Wide Web. It was created by Oliver McBryan at the
University of Colorado and was announced in March 1994.
XrayXcellence XrayXcellence.dentistry.dal.ca (also viewed at
bpass.dentistry.dal.ca) was created by Barry Pass, PhD, DDS, in June 1994, while he was a faculty member at Dalhousie University's School of Dentistry, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The website was active for approximately 6 years and provided educational and scholarly information and website links for dentistry, radiology and health physics. The site was accessed almost one-half million times, from every Internet serviced country, during the 5 years since its creation in 1994. In response to this web site on the WorldWideWeb - a paradigm shift in the dissemination of scholarly information - hundreds of global email inquiries every year were received from clinicians, scientists, students and the lay public with dental and medical questions. Frequently, medical questions resulted in appropriate referrals.
Yahoo! The web portal
Yahoo! was started by
Jerry Yang and
David Filo as ''
Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web''. but later started posting information in Spanish at www.ezln.org. The Zapatistas usage of the internet made them among the first in the world to use the internet for activism purposes. ==See also==