The Useless Web was an example of early

web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

humor Humour (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humorism, humoral medicine of the ancient Gre ...

Criteria

It was a list of links to web pages the writers deemed egregiously useless, with humorous descriptions. In time it grew to a directory with links archived by category. It helped disseminate many early minor

internet meme An Internet meme, commonly known simply as a meme ( ), is an idea, behavior, style, or image that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. What is considered a meme may vary across different communities on the Internet ...

s and phenomenon. There were many imitators, and it spawned its own

Yahoo Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds ma ...

category.

Marc Andreessen Marc Lowell Andreessen ( ; born July 9, 1971) is an American entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon ...

once called it "One of the best sites on the Web".

Origins

The site was founded by Paul Phillips in 1994. Steve Berlin took over in 1995 and started to update more regularly. In 1999 John Gephart IV took over and continued to update the site until early 2001.

Reception

The Useless Web received media coverage in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' and '' Wired'' magazine.

Similar websites

A similar website, The Useless Web, was launched in 2012.

References

External links