History
Traffic Exchanges date back to the beginning of the web and were primarily used by organizations to share sites between employees. Viewers would rate pages in a similar fashion to the now popular social bookmarking phenomenon. When interesting websites were hard to find a traffic exchange for an organisation new to the web proved an invaluable tool.
Circa 1994 traffic exchanges moved from corporate intranets to the web. In an effort to build communities the concept of rating pages was replaced with rewarding members for viewing.
It was 1996 before traffic exchanges began to charge for traffic and around this time the concept changed from a tool for locating interesting sites to a commercial one. This change in direction resulted in increased popularity at the expense of the content which is now almost exclusively commerce.
Read more about this topic: Traffic Exchange
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.”
—Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“The basic idea which runs right through modern history and modern liberalism is that the public has got to be marginalized. The general public are viewed as no more than ignorant and meddlesome outsiders, a bewildered herd.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)