Chip Shots by Chip Griffin
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Surfing Back in Time

I had a conversation yesterday that spurred me to think back to the “old days” of the World Wide Web. You see, I’ve been at this game long enough to remember Yahoo before it was at Yahoo.com. Most of you probably don’t know that it used to live at http://akebono.stanford.edu.

In any case, I took a dip into the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (a great tool for peeking at what web sites looked like on various dates in the past) to check out what some of my own early efforts online looked like.

I thought I might share some of my nostalgia with you — and then explain why it matters.

My First Web Site

My site itself no longer exists, but NCSA Mosaic, the organization that gave birth to the first popular web browser (which would later become Netscape), lists my site called CyberPolitics in a September 1995 list of “What’s New” on the web.

My First Web Site Listed in Yahoo

Ironically, the ad at the top of the page showing my CyberPolitics site when the Wayback Machine archived Yahoo on December 20, 1996 was for Townhall.com, a company I would become CEO of a few months later.

My First CEO Gig

Here’s what Townhall.com looked like around the time that I left my role as CEO there. It sure was green!

My First Blog

I started my first blog in 1999. It was called PrimaryScoop and it chronicled the presidential primary campaigns of 2000. It would serve in a roundabout way as the inspiration for CustomScoop.

The First CustomScoop Web Site

On September 1, 2000, not long after we launched the company, the Wayback Machine captured the first look we had for our web site. I especially like the big dip in the “p” to tie in the tagline — classy!

So there you have it. A brief trip down memory lane. What’s the point you ask? Besides a bit of nostalgia, I often find that the past often gives you good ideas for the future. It’s not worthwhile to linger in times gone by, but to check in to what you and others were doing years or decades ago may provide valuable insight that helps gel your thinking today.

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