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
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