I recently saw a nostalgic tweet about the site "everythinggirl.com", which made me remember back when all my favorite sites first became partnered with it. I thought I'd list some other things worth remembering.
1. eCards
Nowadays, we post PicCollages on Instagram for our friend's birthdays. Back in the day, however, we used to send eCards. They didn't even have to be for a birthday! You could send them to apologize to friends, to let them know you missed them, or as I once did in sixth grade, you can use them to break up with your boyfriend! Make sure to call the person to remind them to check their e-mail, though, because the cards expire after 30 days.
2. EverythingGirl
The original social media... except we all used it to play the games that were already on our favorite websites before they joined EverythingGirl. I think there was some kind of forum, but I don't remember ever using it. I also don't remember what the "points" did.
3. Millsberry
Millsberry wanted to be as cool as Neopets, but everything cost too much money to do, so if your parents weren't cool with dropping real-world money for your silly online game (remember when that used to not be a normal thing?) then your experience wasn't very fun.
4. Neopets
This is on everyone's list already, but what do you REALLY remember about Neopets? Lying about your age to bypass the parental consent form? Collecting avatars? Plots? The Neopian Times? The Darkest Faerie? The magazines? The trading card game (the original one)? The McDonalds toys? Sites like Cloudneo, Soup-Faerie, StarlightMKS? (Fun fact, I accidentally found the girl who made StarlightMKS on Facebook last year but was too chicken to contact her/I thought it might be creepy). For less oldschool fans, what about Neovision? I made stuff for that but never got the chance to submit it before they took the feature down.
Question- were there ever any actual 16-17 year olds on Neopets, or were we all just 8-10 lying about our age?
Additional fun fact: In 6th grade, someone sent me the link to a scam website via Neomail. I replied and told them it was a scam. Because I replied to the message, and the body text of my message included the original message AKA the link, my account got frozen for sending scam links, and there was nothing they could do to unfreeze it. I don't remember the username of the person who sent me the scam link, but whoever you are, I hope you got frozen, too :P
5. The American Girl Club
OliviaAM
This was one of those things where a company tried to be cool for a little while and failed. I'm not sure how long the AG Club actually lasted, but I only played on it for a few weeks. There was a basketball related game? And like, some "taking care of a cat/dog" simulator that was a remake of a regular site game they used to have.
6. Yahooligans
AKA one of the few "approved" websites to play on when you were done with the computer lab assignment. Honorable mention goes to BrainPop.
What do you remember about the internet back in the day?
