1996-2006
In 1996 Bolt.com was started as a teen community, by a team including Dan Pelson, Lee Morgenroth, David Cancel and Jane Mount as part of Concrete Media. In many ways Bolt.com was ahead of its time. It was among the first social networking sites to appear on the Internet. It offered a wide range of unique services including a daily horoscope, chat rooms, message boards, tagbooks (a knowledge market feature), photo albums, internet radio, browser games, blogs, e-cards, an instant messenger service, a clubs feature (giving people with similar interests a common message board), and badges (a system of awards for user profiles). An e-mail service was hosted, but it was discontinued due to email companies such as Yahoo and Google providing between 1 and nearly 3 gigabytes of email storage for free, rendering Bolt's email service obsolete. This was done without notifying its email subrscribers. Also bolt was one of the first sites to give its members their own web page. As the site aged it relied more on corporate sponsorships. In 2002 the badges slowly started leaning towards company sponsored badges, which led to Bolt becoming more commercial with an increase of ads into the users' activities. Some notable ones included the Verizon Wireless, Gillette, and Sony badges.
Bolt was originally marketed towards teenagers to create content, meet people, and play games in a safe, no pressure, and age-appropriate environment. However, as members aged and stayed with the site, more and more members were college students and/or between 18-24. These members tended to be more interested in current events, religion, and politics, and kept the message boards active with lively heated debate. Many members had known each other for several years and have formed close bonds with their fellow "regs." When Boltfolio, soon to become the new Bolt.com was introduced, members were at first very willing to aid Bolt Media in improving the site. Tensions soon flared between Bolt Media and the supporters of the classic Bolt system as Bolt Media slowly started to turn their full attention to the new Bolt.com. Very few members were willing to make the switch, and after the demise of Bolt2, few stayed on to post on the new Bolt website.
In 2004, bolt.com revamped its site during the summer and officially unveiled itself July 15, 2004. Renovations to the site were completed on September 14, 2004 when the clubs were re-opened. Some of the notable changes include:
- The removal of HTML customization on the main club page.
- The removal of HTML in the club news, a popular feature that may have contributed to the fall in popularity of Bolt. Bolt also became a popular site for NSFW interaction, pushing their original audience farther away.
Bolt.com's second iteration was originally known as Boltfolio, a Bolt Media property launched in late 2005. Touted by itself as the leader of the "cult of creativity", Boltfolio intended to provide a one-stop shop for creative users to upload their own photos, videos, and music, as well as write blogs or record directly from a webcam. The original aim was to provide a simple set of tools that would attract users of like-minded creative sites such as DeviantArt, YouTube, and Flickr.
Read more about this topic: Bolt (website)