Most Visited Websites

Even wondered what is it that makes Yahoo or Google different from the millions of websites that are there? Is it the leadership of the top management or the visionary thought process of its owners or is the success attributed to some great marketing techniques? We will take a leaf from the books of some of the worlds most visited websites and try to figure out what exactly is the reason for their all round success and who are all the people behind these household names.

1. yahoo - Started by Jerry Yang and David Filo in 1994-both Stanford Graduates, Yahoo was basically a personal site which was named- ‘Jerry’s guide to World Wide Web’. It was later named Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle (YAHOO). As time progressed, Yahoo added new technologies, and with its highly-liked domain name, attracts almost 16 billion visitors annually, making it rule the roost among the most visited websites of all time.

2. google - Another brainchild of Stanford Graduates, Google was the idea of Sergey Brim and Larry Page. They has made a ‘web crawler’ as a part of their academic projects and later evolved the algorithm to make one of the most efficient search engines in the world. Google was started in 1998, and later took on the world and is one of the most visited websites that we have today. Google own many other companies and websites, which themselves are among the most visited websites in the world. Owing to innovative commercial ideas (adwords and adsense being the two most well-known), Larry and Sergey have a net worth of more than 18 Billion USD as of today.

3. youtube Owned as a subsidiary of Google, Youtube was initially started by three Paypal employees- Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim and Steve Chen in 2005. Due to the heavy demand and utilization of the online-video sharing concept that You tube had introduced, it soon became one of the most visited websites. Within and year, Google had sealed a deal with You tube and bought it from its creators.

4. Live was launched by MSN way back in 2005 as one of the first windows personalized experience services. Customizable with gadgets and other mini devices, Live also enables the user to have RSS feed which allows users to view the latest news instantly on their desktops and other connected gadgets. The sheer use of technology saw live skyrocket to success and become one of the most visited websites around.

5. Facebook We see so many social networking sites around. Facebook.com is one of the pioneers in this field. The concept was founded and drafted by a then- Harvard Student- Mark Zuckerberg. The site was launched for Harvard students in 2004 and the concept was later extended to other colleges and Universities and was finally made available for anyone who was more than 13 years of age. With more than 110 million active users, Facebook.com is definitely in our list of worlds most visited websites.

6.msn Almost every internet user is familiar with MSN. The site has been present since time immortal, and its popularity is mainly due to the unabated presence of MSN around the world. Launched way back in 1995, MSN or the Microsoft Network was a huge success, and is even today. Nathan Myrvohld was the man largely responsible for giving this concept concrete shape back then and making it one of the most visited websites of all time.

7. myspace Myspace is another one of those social networking sites, with a difference though. Brad Greenspan, the CEO and founder of euniverse, had teemed up with other employees of the same company to mimic the success of Friendster with a change. That change was in the form of brighter colors, better features and more liveliness, making Myspace an instant success.

8.wikipedia Wikipedia Founded as a more open and complementary version of Naupedia (an encyclopedia in the making), Wikipedia has been a huge success. As a brain child of Jimmy Wales (the founder of Naupedia) and his co-worker Larry Sanger, Wikipedia attract almost 700 million visitors annually and is a collaborative effort to provide knowledge to everyone for free. A site much loved by scholars and laymen alike, it is definitely going to last for a lot many years in the list of most visited websites in the world.

9. blogger was launched by Pyra labs in 1999 and taken over by Google in 2003. Being one of the oldest free blogging services, it has become one of the most visited websites of the modern era.

10. baidu As the favorite website of the world’s most populous country, Baidu.com is definitely one of the most visited websites in the world. The concept of a search engine specializing in music and image (multimedia) searches is a new one and is being loved by its users around the world, especially in China.