The World Wide Web turns 30 years old on March 12. To celebrate this birthday, we’re crowdsourcing a Twitter timeline of the most important milestones in the web’s history.
And we need your help!
Each hour over a 30-hour period on March 12 and 13 will represent a year of the web’s history. The Web Foundation will activate the timeline with a tweet at 08:00 CET, representing 1989, the year Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the web. Then at each consecutive hour, there will be posts from founders, influencers, brands, inventors and activists around the world, recalling a significant moment from the web’s history.
To make sure this timeline tells a full story of the web, we’d love you to contribute your top web moments. They might be personal milestones, ways the web has changed the world, websites you loved or memes you couldn’t stop sharing.
To contribute, tweet using the following format and hashtags.
In (x year), ____________ #Web30 #ForTheWeb
Examples of other moments will be things like the first tweet, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the launch of the iPhone, the Arab Spring, and grumpy cat – all mixed in with people’s personal moments. The content will put the light-hearted with the life-changing.
To create a graphic to include in your tweet, try our easy-to-use builder. To tweet at a time corresponding to a specific year, check our timeline schedule.
A 30-hour journey
This 30-hour timeline will be mapped against a 30-hour journey Sir Tim is taking on March 12th and 13th, starting at CERN, stopping in London and finishing in Lagos, Nigeria.
The journey will officially start at CERN in Geneva on the morning of March 12, where Sir Tim will join a great line-up of speakers to reflect on the impact the web has had over the last 30 years. The event will be live-streamed from 8:00 am CET.
Later that day, in partnership with the Science Museum in London, the Web Foundation hosting an evening of conversation with Sir Tim who, along with other leaders in science, technology and policy, will discuss how the web has changed our lives and what we can do to protect it. The event will be live-streamed from 17:00 GMT.
In Lagos, Sir Tim and Web Foundation co-founder Rosemary Leith will visit the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC) which works to nurture the next generation of female technology creators, entrepreneurs and leaders. They will also visit Co-Creation Hub (CcHub) where technologists and social entrepreneurs work to solve social challenges in Nigeria.
Other ways to get involved
There are a number of other ways you can help us celebrate the web’s 30th birthday:
- Click to share the campaign on Twitter and Facebook
- Share our graphics & create your own
- Add your voice to our campaign for a better web
- Support the Web Foundation with a donation
For the latest on our Web@30 celebrations, subscribe to receive our newsletter, follow us on Twitter at @webfoundation & sign up to our Facebook birthday event.
To receive a weekly news brief on the most important stories in tech, subscribe to The Web This Week.
Andrew EDSOR
March 9, 2019
As I was on the Internet before Microsoft seem to discover it, I feel quite superior!!
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Tony Q. King
March 12, 2019
Me too! I remember back in '92.'93? Using Mosaic or maybe the first Netscape browser on the internet ( I was an IBM mainframe sys-programmer) and "appointed" as the resident Win-3 "expert" as the other DOS guys could fathom it. So I went looking for both MS and IBM on he Internet (web). Sorry, dude! They were clueless.I still have an @ME T-shirt that an IBM techie gave me when they finally discovered HTTP.Oh- earlier, at a sales-conference back in '88, another IBM sales-rep was flogging Token Ring- "MUCH better than that old slow Ethernet!". lol. I don't think they were handing T-shirts back then. Too bad.Ahh.. the stories I could tell about that shit...
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Antonio Salis
March 12, 2019
Proud user of Mosaic, until end of October 1994, then I switched on Netscape 0.91 on SunOS ...html without table support ;-) all webmasters around would not survive without it :-)
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M.S
March 12, 2019
I run up to you in the hallways of MIT, but nobody care of you back then, it was Steve Jobs who let you use his NEXT machine, and thank to John Sculley for firing Jobs from Apple. Everyone invention is someone mistake, the French started Minitel in the 80 and DARPA open up the TCP for you guys et voilà,the WEB is a beautiful creation for those who experienced the internet as text base using Telnet, FTP before HTTP Mosaic Netscape.
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Ashutosh Pathak
March 12, 2019
In #Angels&Demons by #DanBrown @CERN director upon finding a murdered scientist with "Illuminati" branded across his chest gets Robert Langdon via super-sonic jet & upon Langdon's disbelief of being found via web, Dir says CERN is too good with web for they invented web! #TrueStory #ThanksTimeBernersLee :)
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Richard Fink
March 12, 2019
I discovered this "internet" thing and the World Wide Web at a demo day at the old Exploratorium in San Francisco in 1993. The computers were using Mosiac. I was immediately mesmerized, understanding its impact for the future. That week I set about founding an early Bay Area wide ISP and in 1994 opened WorldPassage in Mill Valley California, just up the road from The Well.Thank you Tim, a very heartfelt thank you! Not to sound silly, but for all of us it is like we get the opportunity to actually thank the living Thomas Edison!
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R Gentile
March 13, 2019
I discovered the web after reading an article about this thing called a browser in an OS/2 magazine. So, I fired up my 486, started WebExplorer and discovered a career as a web developer.
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schorsch schabrack
March 13, 2019
I think January 12 2016 should be a milestone in the web history, when IE6 support on all Windows versions ended (sorry, don't know how to use twitter or hashtags)
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Eddie Neethling
March 13, 2019
I fully support this initiative. The time for each of us individually, and collectively, to be held accountable for what we put onto the web as well as what we read, watch and or download, is long overdue. Well done to all who are a part of this initiative.
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John M. "Jack" Peckham CCIM, RECS, CIPS
March 13, 2019
In 1963 I founded Data Realty Corp, the first commercial real estate firm to use technology to match investors with investments. We used an IBM keypunch and sorter to accomplish this -- along with the funny little card with holes in them. We quickly sold income properties totaling many millions of dollars. When the Web crept onto the scene I spent a lot of time typing in big long cryptic lines of DOS characters to "go from one place to another. In the early 1990's (probably '93) I was walking up the aisle at a trade show and spotted my first browser. I think it was then called "Mosaic". I grabbed the mouse and, after a few clicks, stood back -- whistled -- and mumbled -- "This is going to change everything"And sure enough --- it did!
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Ian Smith
March 17, 2019
2019. Isn't this what you're after for the future?
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Penny-Ruff
July 2, 2021
I believe. Whoever coined the phrase (surfing the web) is also Satoshi Nakamoto.
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