THREAD: Every website builder in history:
Oct 29, 1991
@timberners_lee publishes a document outlining the first 18 HTML tags.
Tim Berners-Lee is the inventor of the World Wide Web. The godfather.
Apr 12, 1992
@bbedit releases the Freeware HTML and Text Editor.
As it was back in those days, it only worked on platform — Macintosh.
Nov 1994
David Hills and John Rezner launch Geocities.
Their idea was to create a virtual community of websites organized in "internet cities"
(Their original name was "Beverly Hills Internet")
Nov 1995
Vermeer Technologies ships FrontPage 1.0 becoming (maybe) the first real WYSIWYG editor.
Four months later, @Microsoft bought them for $133 million ($219 million in present-day terms).
Dec 1995
@Adobe releases PageMill 1.0 — their own WYSIWYG HTML editor.
It allowed users to easily create a full website without any knowledge of HTML.
1996
@Angelfire launches and becomes the place to build a free, fun, and professional-looking website.
Who built the site below?
Mark Zuckerberg's (@finkd). It's actually his first website. And he built it with Angelfire.
Oh, how times have changed...
Dec 1997
Macromedia releases @dreamweaver 1.0.
It quickly becomes the most popular site builder by allowing users to switch between text and WYSIWYG mode.
Aug 23, 1999
Pyra Labs launches @blogger and grows a massive community of users over the next few years.
Fun fact Blogger was co-founded by @ev who co-founded Twitter. And early employees were @goldman and @shellen.
It was bought by @Google in Feb 2003.
2000
@wendytanwhite releases @moonfruit from London, England.
Initially, it was supported only by advertisements. After the dot-com bubble burst, it became a subscription service.
Wendy Tan White is now CEO at Intrinsic .ai an Alphabet company.
2001
Brothers @haroon and @zekitm launch @webs from their dorm room at the University of Maryland.
In 2011 it was acquired by Vistaprint for $117.5 million.
Its original name was "Freewebs".
May 23, 2003
@photomatt and @mikelittlezed1 release @wordpressdotcom 0.7.
It's an open-source content management system. And it's publishing was based on PHP and MySQL.
Today its' the most popular site builder in the world — over 30% of websites wordlwide use it.
2004
@acasalena releases @squarespace a blog hosting service from his dorm room at the University of Maryland.
Crazy enough, he was the only employee until 2006 when it reached $1M in revenue.
2006
@drusenko, @cfanini, & Dan Veltri launch @weebly.
In 2005, the college they went to, Penn State, required all students to maintain an Internet portfolio.
Hence... Weebly.
Weebly was acquired by @Square in 2018 for $265 million.
2006
@tobi, @danielweinand, & @scottica launch a strictly e-commerce site builder called @Shopify.
The impetus of Shopify came from Tobi and Scott's attempt to open an online store for snowboarding equipment they called Snowddevil.
Today Shopify is worth $170B. lol
2006
Israeli developers @Avishai_ab, Nadav Abrahami, and Giora Kaplan release @Wix.
It allowed users to create @html5 websites with drag-and-drop tools that were optimized for mobile.
Wix is now valued at $11B.
2006
@jkraus and Graham Spencer co-found JotSpot.
In Feb 2008 it sold to Google.
And it soon became Google Sites.
2009
@eddiemachaalani and Mitchell Harper release @BigCommerce.
The company's name was initially "Interspire". And Eddie and Mitchell met in an online chat room.
BigCommerce is now worth ~$750M.
Aug 5, 2013
@callmevlad, @thesergie, @bryantchou release @webflow after graduating from @ycombinator
It's a site builder specifically for designers. And as of Jan 2021 was valued at $2.1B.
2017
@ajlkn launches @carrd — a simple, free, and full-responsible one-page site builder.
AJ has been a one-man show from the start.
He's one of the first folks considered part of @IndieHackers movement.
2018
@ohadpr launches @stackbit — a site builder for developers.
It takes care of the developer's grunt work, uses the most modern frameworks, and is free of any vendor lock-in.
It's still early. We'll see where this one goes. ;-)
If you made it this far, you may want to share the thread with your followers.
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And if you want early access to our 2.0 launch, DM me!
Or say what's up in our Discord.
stackbit.com/community
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