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This amazing image about social media spread via the internet (here and here) in the past days. Here is the decrypted version where the different letters come from:

i : twitter

w : twitter

a : ebay

n : msn

t : youtube

m : gmail

y : yahoo

L : blogger

i : flickr

f : facebook

e : ebay

b : blogger

a : yahoo

c : facebook

k : flickr

! : yahoo

I still remember the times of status bars "imitations" or universal toolbars on websites. Back than we where running a very successful service called framead.

What we've basically did was providing companies and website owners with an additional script for their site. Once plugged-in, visitors always received a status toolbar containing content of the given website as well as ad's and link-exchange advertising for the framead community. This helped many website for additional visitor growths and gave sites a good revenue potential.

With the rise of ad-blockers, new browsers and new websites this kind of service kind of died, taking into account that more than 1.000 where running our service alone in January 2001 already.

Given this "history lesson", I'm really surprised why toolbars such as facebooks, AOLs or the DIGG-BAR are so widely discussed on the web, like they've been the reinvention of the weel.

For some "plugins" I've seen rise and fall over the past 10 years. I'm very sure this trend will go the same way as it went before.

What do you think?

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