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Which of these would YOU ask your parents to buy you?

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Before the minimalistic iPhone design dominated the scene, cell phones like the RAZR, Sidekick, and Blackberry were the must-have accessory

The year was 1983, and Motorola had just delivered the world's first cell phone, the DynaTAC 8000x. Sure, the device cost $4,000 (about $10,000 today), weighed 1.75 pounds, was 13 inches long, and only provided about 30 minutes of talk time, but it was a technological breakthrough. Nearly 40 years later, cell phones are one of the most ubiquitous devices on earth: it's estimated that some 5 billion of the world's 7.7 billion people own mobile phones. And while today's smartphones are some of the most powerful devices in the world, we're captivated by the golden age of cell phones-the early aughts.

In the first decade of the new millennium, cell phones hit the mainstream for the first time, and numerous companies battled to create the next must-have accessory. Their designs were avant-garde, and became quickly intertwined with pop culture of the time- Paris Hilton is best remembered from that era clutching one of her dogs and a cell phone. And despite smartphones being as popular as they are today, there's even a nostalgic trend to return to the flip or slider phones of the early 2000s. "The phone today has too many functions, too many apps, and now too many photo options. Some people who do not use most of these features want it to be just a phone," Constantin Boym, Pratt Institute's chair of industrial design, tells AD. "This goes hand in hand with reducing technology-based stress in our lives with a turn to bicycles, slow cooking, yoga, healthy options in food." Will we all go back to texting via T9? We're not so convinced. But we're all for a nostalgic blast from the past-check out eight of the most iconic cell phone designs from 2000 to 2009.

Between the time this old-school device debuted in 2000 and its retirement in 2005, 126 million units were sold around the world, making this one of the most successful cell phones of all time. Finnish company Nokia went with a simple, streamlined designed-how Scandinavian of them-and built the phone to last. In fact, the Nokia 3310 is regarded as one of the most durable cell phones out there. The phone was resurrected in 2017 with a modernized design that comes in four colors. The best part of this new analog cell phone? Its battery lasts a full month on standby mode.

Danger Hiptop/T-Mobile Sidekick

Most teens and young adults in the 2000s will remember the Sidekick, one of the It phones of the decade, notable for its QWERTY keyboard revealed by a sliding screen. It was not the first cell phone with a full keyboard-that distinction goes to the Nokia Communicator 9000, which launched in 1996, six years prior to the Sidekick-but the Sidekick was certainly one of the most popular. The phone was originally designed and produced by the now-defunct company Danger, Inc., which named the product Hiptop, though it underwent a rebranding by T-Mobile to become the Sidekick.

Perhaps the first cell phone to go "viral," if you will, was the Motorola RAZR, which hit the market in 2004. "In 2003, Motorola set out with a goal of making a device that could easily fit into your pocket. This focus on thinness caused us to cut the device's thickness in half and entirely rethink how to design and architect a phone," says Paul Pierce, executive director at Motorola Mobility, who was part of the original RAZR team. "As a result, some of RAZR's most iconic design features-ultrathin backlit keypad, distinguished chin, metallic finish-came to life by truly innovating around a sleek design." The brand then started offering the phone in multiple colors, making it a fashion accessory, and eventually going on to partner with Dolce & Gabanna on a limited edition model. "What started as innovation grew into a cultural icon and transformed technology into fashion for the first time ever," says Pierce. The RAZR has even made a comeback-a new "foldable" model with a bendable touchscreen within a clamshell (or flip phone) design was recently released.

Even though the Sony Ericsson W800i, introduced in 2005, was not the most popular cell phone of the decade, it was a significant one, as it was one of the first to consider a cell phone a device for playing music. For the phone, Sony partnered with Walkman-the old-school portable media player-on the phone, which had two GB of external memory and a battery life of up to 30 hours of playing music. The phone had an orange-and-white exterior, which was certainly a distinctive combination.

Following the Sony Ericsson W800i, LG introduced its own MP3 player-phone hybrid called the LG Chocolate in 2006. Like the RAZR, it came in multiple hues: Dark Chocolate (black), Mint Chocolate (pale green), White Chocolate (white), Strawberry Chocolate (pink), and Cherry Chocolate (red). When closed, the phone resembled a music player with a screen and a circular control panel, but the screen slid up to reveal numbered keys.

In the 2000s, BlackBerry made the jump from a phone for businesspeople to a phone for the general public, largely due to the launch of the BlackBerry Pearl in 2006. It had a sleeker profile than its brethren, which felt more like old-school PalmPilots than cell phones, plus a modified QWERTY keyboard in which some neighboring letters shared keys. It was also the first BlackBerry device to have a camera and music player capabilities. The most revolutionary thing about the Pearl's design, however, was the introduction of the trackball, which became a touchstone of the BlackBerry brand.

Without a doubt the most revolutionary phone of the early 2000s, the Apple iPhone was unlike any of its predecessors. From a visual design perspective, it was a rectangular, minimalist gem, featuring a sleek metal-and-glass body, a singular button, and an extremely thin profile. From a technological design perspective, the touchscreen made waves. "We're going to use the best pointing device in the world," said Steve Jobs in the 2007 keynote that introduced the iPhone to the world. "We're going to use our fingers. We're going to touch this with our fingers." It's true that the iPhone was not the very first touchscreen phone ever invented (the IBM Simon had a touchscreen back in 1992), but the iPhone had the most advanced technology to date. Of course, the iPhone paved the way for today's smartphones, almost all of which mimic its minimalist, screen-oriented design.

As soon as Apple launched iPhone and iOS, its operating system, other manufacturers rushed to conjure up their own versions of the smartphone. The first phone to use Apple iOS's main competitor, Android (developed by a consortium of developers, including Google), was the HTC Dream, which debuted in 2008 and also went by the name T-Mobile G1. Unlike the iPhone, the HTC Dream had an analog QWERTY keyboard beneath a sliding touchscreen.

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8 Iconic Cell Phone Designs From the Early 2000s

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Before the minimalistic iPhone design dominated the scene, cell phones like the RAZR, Sidekick, and Blackberry were the must-have accessory The year was 1983, and Motorola had just delivered the world's first cell phone, the DynaTAC 8000x.

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While joining Apple, the world's most valuable company, seems like a no-brainer today, things were different back in 2001. That's when CEO Steve Jobs demanded - not asked - that Tony Fadell join the company to create a groundbreaking device. But the man who would go on to initially balked at the idea.

"I was like, 'whoa whoa,'" Fadell tells me during a Zoom interview to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the iPod on Oct. 23. "Back then to go to Apple you had to be pretty nuts."

In early 2001 while he was developing his own MP3 player, Fadell was tapped as a consultant by Apple, who asked him to come up with different prototypes for a digital music player that would work with the company's just announced iTunes software. He clearly made an impression on Jobs. "We're building this, and you're now going to join us to build it," Fadell recalled Jobs saying.

Of course, Fadell eventually agreed and led the team that built one of the most significant products in Apple's history - one that is still available on Apple's site (albeit in a vastly different form). The iPod turned a company struggling with sales and a tiny sliver of the personal computer market into a consumer electronics powerhouse. It also revolutionized the digital music business, effectively destroying CDs and turning Apple's iconic white MP3 players, and their ubiquitous white headphones, into a status symbol.

Most importantly, much of the early work on the iPod paved the road for the iPhone, Apple's next groundbreaking product. The iPhone changed virtually everything about how we live and interact with our mobile devices and made Apple, now worth $2.42 trillion, the most valuable company in the world.

Fadell, who followed up his iPod success by founding smart home product maker Nest Labs (later acquired by Google), talked me through the "crazy" early days of development on the iPod, why he thinks it succeeded and how it somehow endured the test of time. This is his story.

Apple declined to add anything to the story.

Just a consulting gig

Fadell, 52, wore a loose-fitting olive polo shirt and a pair of AirPods Max and spoke animatedly in our video chat. The veteran of Silicon Valley, who had stints at Philips Electronics and Apple spinoff General Magic before taking on the Apple gig, recalled those early days.

When Apple executive Jon Rubinstein, who had been tasked with creating a music player, came knocking in early 2001, Fadell was already working on his own startup, Fuse Systems, with the goal of creating a mainstream MP3 player. It was a nascent market, with more than a dozen players from different companies including Creative Labs and RCA. The problem: Sales of the devices, which cost a few hundred dollars apiece, only totaled 500,000 units in 2000, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. Fuse itself faced plenty of rejection. Still, Fadell saw the Apple consulting gig as a chance to keep his own project alive.

"I'm going to go in and consult," he said. "I'll make some money and keep my company going."

He spent roughly seven weeks researching different options for a digital music player, pulling research from his own company. Ultimately, he built three mockups made of Styrofoam, and used his grandfather's fishing weights to give them the right amount of heft.

At the end of March 2001, he presented them to Steve Jobs. Apple veteran Stan Ng had worked with Fadell to prepare a stack of papers for the presentation - this was before the days of slideshows - and prepared him for both Jobs and his reputation for an explosive temper. "Those stories were ingrained in my brain, burned into my brain, so I'm going in nervous," Fadell said.

Jobs immediately took the stack of papers, riffled through the pages and quickly tossed them aside. "Here's what I want to do," Fadell recalled Jobs saying, hijacking the conversation and forcing them to dive right in.

When presenting the models, Fadell did as Ng coached, showing off the worst model first, then the second and, finally, his favorite as the last option.

Jobs seized on it immediately.

"Steve picked it up and he's like, 'we're building this and you're now going to join us to build it,' and I was like 'whoa whoa,'" Fadell said.

It's easy to forget that Apple jumping into this market wasn't a sure-fire bet. The company's sales, which came from its Mac computers, were on the decline, and Apple had posted a loss of $195 million in the prior quarter.

Fadell, who spent the past decade working on devices with "limited success," wasn't sure he could go through disappointment again by building an MP3 player no one would buy.

No surprise, but Jobs got his way.

'Holy shit, is this going to work?'

After a few weeks of negotiations with Jobs, Fadell joined Apple in April 2001 and assembled a team made up of Fuse and General Magic employees to put together what would become the iPod. The project immediately faced an uphill challenge. The team needed to work with a lot of new components, including a brand new hard drive from Toshiba that Rubinstein, who oversaw the whole project, identified as the key ingredient for the iPod.

Other breakthroughs included new software for the user interface and a then-new kind of lithium ion pack, giving the device 10 hours of battery life that far exceeded anything else in the market.

They also had to figure out how to put that Toshiba drive - a (now) old-fashioned spinning-disk type, prone to damage if mishandled - into a portable device that would be shoved into pockets, dropped on the ground and thrown onto tables. On top of that, his team had to integrate Apple's FireWire file transfer technology so people could quickly transfer their songs.

"There were a lot of 'Holy shit, is this going to work?' kind of moments," he said. "We really didn't know."

All Fadell knew was that he had to get this thing out before Christmas 2001. That's a tall order, considering it takes about 18 months to develop a new smartphone today. Fadell said he really got started in May - with a launch just five months later.

"It was nonstop, seven days a week," he said.

Fadell's team worked with the industrial design group, led by famed Apple designer Jony Ive, to finalize the look of the iPod. Because the next wave of Macs would embrace white and clear plastic, Apple took the same design language and applied it to the iPod.

Along the way, Fadell saw two other projects at Apple scrapped, which fueled him to move even faster to finish (he wouldn't comment on what those projects were). Then came the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, freezing the nation even as he had to rally the team in that final stretch. "It was absolutely nuts."

When Jobs unveiled the iPod at an Oct. 23 Apple event at its Town Hall amphitheater in Cupertino, California, the device wasn't technically done, according to Fadell. The software wasn't finished, and the company hadn't signed off on the manufacturing plan. But Jobs gave that pre-1.0 version out to the media in attendance, along with the 20 CDs containing the music that was preloaded on the device.

After the launch, he and his team went right back to work. (Reporters who got the prerelease iPod were asked to return them a few weeks later when version 1.0 was released to the market.)

None of that stopped the iPod from garnering massive critical praise for its fresh design and innovative scroll wheel. ("Early observers thought it was a speaker," Fadell mused.) But after the Mac faithful gobbled it up, the iPod, well, hit a sour note.

"After that, it was dead," Fadell said.

The secret to the iPod's success

That may have been Fadell being a bit melodramatic - Apple reportedly sold 125,000 units in that initial holiday stretch - but those sales weren't going to turn the company around. The willingness to keep going was the critical part of a heart-to-heart conversation Fadell had with Jobs that convinced him to join the company.

Fadell asked Apple's visionary leader if he was willing to go the distance with the iPod, not just investing in this first unit, but to commit to a family of products. Fadell had been through enough scenarios in which a company cancels the first product nine months in because it didn't want to invest in the next one. In Fadell's mind, it took three generations to get the ball rolling.

"A lot of people stop midway through the journey, and I wanted to make sure we weren't going to do that," he said.

Jobs told Fadell he was going to throw marketing dollars at the iPod, pulling resources from its core Mac business. And even though sales of the original iPod and the follow-up version didn't light any fires, Jobs followed through.

"He held up his side of the business, and the rest is history," he said.

It wasn't until the iPod hit its third generation in 2003, complete with a sleek redesign, that it began to take off as a mass market phenomenon. Fadell said he and Jobs continually pushed each other to take each version further, and he noted that Apple had become the largest consumer of NAND flash memory when the iPod Nano came out.

"We had this cycle, this heartbeat, every 12 months," he said. "We took some really big risks to hit it again and again. We weren't playing it safe. We never rested on our laurels."

The iPod also got another boost in April 2003, when Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, giving people a way to buy music from a catalog of 200,000 digital songs rather than having to rip their own CDs.

There had been other digital music players before, but the iPod changed everything. It not only legitimized the category, it absolutely dominated it with more than 80% of the market. Along the way, Apple showed off its marketing prowess and created iconic ads (remember the iPod silhouette commercials?) to pitch the music and its player. Jobs also paired up with rock band U2 in 2004 on a special-edition, black and red version of the iPod with Bono and The Edge on hand for the introduction.

By 2007, a little more than five years after that original launch, Apple sold its 100 millionth iPod. The business peaked in 2008 with sales of 54.8 million units, according to Statista. Fadell was involved with 18 iterations of the iPod.

By 2005, Fadell said Apple was already looking at the competitive threat of cellphones, which started packing in music players and cameras. His team played with prototypes that included a full-screen iPod with a virtual click wheel and that essentially combined an iPod Classic and its wheel with a phone. The Mac team had separately built a massive capacitive touchscreen the size of a pingpong table. Fadell said a mashup of all three eventually led to the iPhone, which was introduced in 2007.

And Apple changed the world of technology again.

Time machine

Apple still sells an iPod - a $199 i Pod Touch that looks more like an iPhone than that original music player - which stands as a testament to its longevity.

Fadell, who had a hand in both the iPod Touch and the first three generations of the iPhone, left Apple in 2008, and in 2010 started Nest, which four years later he sold to Google for $3.2 billion. Today, he serves as principal at Future Shape, an advisory and investment firm that works with engineers on different facets of technology.

Fadell occasionally goes back to his old iPod. It's loaded with '90s and early 2000s alternative music, songs from the Seattle grunge scene, and The White Stripes, who hail from his hometown of Detroit and broke out around that time.

Fittingly, it's a sort of monument to that crazy stretch when he and his team scrambled to build a product that was largely intended to serve the iTunes software, but ended up revolutionizing a market and supercharging Apple's place in the tech world.

"It's a window of time of my music library, and so you leave it that way," he said. "You kind of jack in and you're like, 'I'm just right back to early 2000s music.' It's kind of like a really great mixtape."

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The iPod was no sure thing, but Steve Jobs insisted: 'We're building this'

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While joining Apple, the world's most valuable company, seems like a no-brainer today, things were different back in 2001. That's when CEO Steve Jobs demanded - not asked - that Tony Fadell join the company to create a groundbreaking device. But the man who would go on to initially balked at the idea.

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Hurricane Katrina: Before the Storm

The tropical depression that became Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas on August 23, 2005, and meteorologists were soon able to warn people in the Gulf Coast states that a major storm was on its way. By August 28, evacuations were underway across the region. That day, the National Weather Service predicted that after the storm hit, "most of the [Gulf Coast] area will be uninhabitable for weeks...perhaps longer."

Did you know? During the past century, hurricanes have flooded New Orleans six times: in 1915, 1940, 1947, 1965, 1969 and 2005.

New Orleans was at particular risk. Though about half the city actually lies above sea level, its average elevation is about six feet below sea level-and it is completely surrounded by water. Over the course of the 20th century, the Army Corps of Engineers had built a system of levees and seawalls to keep the city from flooding. The levees along the Mississippi River were strong and sturdy, but the ones built to hold back Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Borgne and the waterlogged swamps and marshes to the city's east and west were much less reliable.

Levee Failures

Before the storm, officials worried that surge could overtop some levees and cause short-term flooding, but no one predicted levees might collapse below their designed height. Neighborhoods that sat below sea level, many of which housed the city's poorest and most vulnerable people, were at great risk of flooding.

The day before Katrina hit, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issued the city's first-ever mandatory evacuation order. He also declared that the Superdome, a stadium located on relatively high ground near downtown, would serve as a "shelter of last resort" for people who could not leave the city. (For example, some 112,000 of New Orleans' nearly 500,000 people did not have access to a car.) By nightfall, almost 80 percent of the city's population had evacuated. Some 10,000 had sought shelter in the Superdome, while tens of thousands of others chose to wait out the storm at home.

By the time Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans early in the morning on Monday, August 29, it had already been raining heavily for hours. When the storm surge (as high as 9 meters in some places) arrived, it overwhelmed many of the city's unstable levees and drainage canals. Water seeped through the soil underneath some levees and swept others away altogether.

By 9 a.m., low-lying places like St. Bernard Parish and the Ninth Ward were under so much water that people had to scramble to attics and rooftops for safety. Eventually, nearly 80 percent of the city was under some quantity of water.

Hurricane Katrina: The Aftermath

Many people acted heroically in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Coast Guard rescued some 34,000 people in New Orleans alone, and many ordinary citizens commandeered boats, offered food and shelter, and did whatever else they could to help their neighbors. Yet the government-particularly the federal government-seemed unprepared for the disaster. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) took days to establish operations in New Orleans, and even then did not seem to have a sound plan of action.

Officials, even including President George W. Bush, seemed unaware of just how bad things were in New Orleans and elsewhere: how many people were stranded or missing; how many homes and businesses had been damaged; how much food, water and aid was needed. Katrina had left in her wake what one reporter called a "total disaster zone" where people were "getting absolutely desperate."

Failures in Government Response

For one thing, many had nowhere to go. At the Superdome in New Orleans, where supplies had been limited to begin with, officials accepted 15,000 more refugees from the storm on Monday before locking the doors. City leaders had no real plan for anyone else. Tens of thousands of people desperate for food, water and shelter broke into the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center complex, but they found nothing there but chaos.

Meanwhile, it was nearly impossible to leave New Orleans: Poor people especially, without cars or anyplace else to go, were stuck. For instance, some people tried to walk over the Crescent City Connection bridge to the nearby suburb of Gretna, but police officers with shotguns forced them to turn back.

Katrina pummeled huge parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, but the desperation was most concentrated in New Orleans. Before the storm, the city's population was mostly black (about 67 percent); moreover, nearly 30 percent of its people lived in poverty. Katrina exacerbated these conditions and left many of New Orleans's poorest citizens even more vulnerable than they had been before the storm.

In all, Hurricane Katrina killed nearly 2,000 people and affected some 90,000 square miles of the United States. Hundreds of thousands of evacuees scattered far and wide. According to The Data Center, an independent research organization in New Orleans, the storm ultimately displaced more than 1 million people in the Gulf Coast region.

Political Fallout From Hurricane Katrina

In the wake of the storm's devastating effects, local, state and federal governments were criticized for their slow, inadequate response, as well as for the levee failures around New Orleans. And officials from different branches of government were quick to direct the blame at each other.

"We wanted soldiers, helicopters, food and water," Denise Bottcher, press secretary for then-Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana told the New York Times. "They wanted to negotiate an organizational chart."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin argued that there was no clear designation of who was in charge, telling reporters, "The state and federal government are doing a two-step dance."

President George W. Bush had originally praised his director of FEMA, Michael D. Brown, but as criticism mounted, Brown was forced to resign, as was the New Orleans Police Department Superintendent. Louisiana Governor Blanco declined to seek re-election in 2007 and Mayor Nagin left office in 2010. In 2014 Nagin was convicted of bribery, fraud and money laundering while in office.

The U.S. Congress launched an investigation into government response to the storm and issued a highly critical report in February 2006 entitled, " A Failure of Initiative."

Changes Since Katrina

The failures in response during Katrina spurred a series of reforms initiated by Congress. Chief among them was a requirement that all levels of government train to execute coordinated plans of disaster response. In the decade following Katrina, FEMA paid out billions in grants to ensure better preparedness.

Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers built a $14 billion network of levees and floodwalls around New Orleans. The agency said the work ensured the city's safety from flooding for the time. But an April 2019 report from the Army Corps stated that, in the face of rising sea levels and the loss of protective barrier islands, the system will need updating and improvements by as early as 2023.

HISTORY Vault

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Hurricane Katrina - Facts, Affected Areas & Lives Lost

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Hurricane Katrina was a destructive Category 5 storm that made landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast in August 2005. The storm triggered catastrophic flooding, particularly in the city of New Orleans, and caused more than 1,800 deaths.

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Social Networking (pre-TikTok and Snapchat)

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Social Networking (pre-TikTok and Snapchat)

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Then and now: a history of social networking sites

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The social networking site, MySpace was founded by several employees from the Internet marketing firm eUniverse in August 2003. The core team included Brad Greenspan, Chris DeWolfe, Josh Berman and Tom Anderson. Known for...

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Who would you side with: Napster or Metallica?

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2000: Heavy metal band Metallica sues Napster for enabling thievery and copyright infringement. The rockin' lawsuit came on the heels of the Recording Industry Association of America's 1999 suit, which claimed similar offenses against the file-sharing service. The two lawsuits set in motion Napster's creeping death.

Napster's saga had begun just one year previous, when college student Shawn Fanning developed the peer-to-peer service in his dorm room to make finding music online easier. Napster streamlined finding songs by creating a musicphile social network -- or, in the eyes of the music industry, a ring of pirates and looters.

Individual users could download multiple songs from multiple computers simultaneously, free of charge. In other words, to the free downloaders, Napster was paradise.

Yet, to Metallica and the recording companies, the start-up was some kind of monster.

"We take our craft -- whether it be the music, the lyrics, or the photos and artwork -- very seriously," wrote Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich in a press release. "It is therefore sickening to know that our art is being traded like a commodity rather than the art that it is. From a business standpoint, this is about piracy -- aka taking something that doesn't belong to you; and that is morally and legally wrong." Ulrich, whom *The Register *dubbed a " notorious Napster naysayer," went on to say that Napster was "trafficking in stolen goods."

To prove his point, Ulrich even performed in an MTV Video Music Awards skit in 2000 in which he busts into a dorm room, slaps Napster stickers on everything from a computer to the thieving student's girlfriend, and then leaves with his loot. The message: "Sharing is only fun when it's not your stuff."

Ulrich told the Senate Judiciary Committee in July 2000 that "Napster hijacked [Metallica's] music without asking. They never sought our permission."

But Napster never actually stored files. It was more of a medium than a carrier. That distinction didn't appease industry critics: "Napster is driving the getaway car," Gold Mountain Entertainment Manager Ronald Stone told Forbes in 2000. It was enabling crime on an unprecedented scale (the RIAA's words, not ours), and so it must fade to black.

Ninth Circuit U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel agreed and issued injunctions to shut Napster down.

The Napster rulings' impact extended well beyond their immediate effects on the company's ability to operate. They changed the way people shared digital media legally.

In 1984, the Supreme Court ruled people could tape TV shows and movies. Since then, gadgets "that allowed people to record and share information were shielded from legal action. [But] Napster changed that thinking," Wired reported in 2002. "Media companies successfully argued in federal court that laws governing analog taping devices -- such as a VCR -- shouldn't apply in a digital age, when copies of music or movies suddenly became perfect replicas."

As a result, downloading music like it was 1999 could land you in jail, or at least earn you some pretty hefty fines, in the 2000s.

Although Napster's original incarnation is long-gone, its legacy and name persist. Napster expanded the reach of digital media well before iTunes, Spotify, Pandora or any of its now defunct spinoffs (Bear Share, Kazaa, LimeWire) came online.

After the demise of the first iteration of Napster, the brand bounced through various acquisitions. In 2011, it merged with the music-streaming service Rhapsody.
Sources: Various
See Also:- Metallica Rips Napster

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April 13, 2000: Seek and Destroy - Metallica Sues Napster

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2000: Heavy metal band Metallica sues Napster for enabling thievery and copyright infringement. The rockin' lawsuit came on the heels of the Recording Industry Association of America's 1999 suit, which claimed similar offenses against the file-sharing service. The two lawsuits set in motion Napster's creeping death.

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Only Someone Born In The ’80s Or ’90s Can Pass This 2000s Song Quiz

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Here's What Caused the Great Recession | History

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Explore the images here and make sure to read the captions!

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A disputed US presidential election, the 9/11 terror attack, technological advancements such as smartphones and social media: all of these defined the first 10 years of the new millennium.

For more on the decade, watch "The 2000s," a CNN original series that airs Sunday nights at 9 p.m.
Editor's note: This gallery contains graphic images. Viewer discretion is advised.
Produced by Brett Roegiers, Lyric Lewin, Bernadette Tuazon, Kyle Almond, Emily Johnson and Jenny Kerrigan

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A disputed US presidential election, the 9/11 terror attack, technological advancements such as smartphones and social media: all of these defined the first 10 years of the new millennium. For more on the decade, watch "The 2000s," a CNN original series that airs Sunday nights at 9 p.m.

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Watch it here

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What Is A Recession?

A recession is a decline or stagnation in economic growth, but the economic indicators used to define the term "recession" have changed over time.

Since the Great Recession, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has described a "global recession" as a decline in real per-capita world gross domestic product (GDP), as supported by other macroeconomic indicators such as industrial production, trade, oil consumption and unemployment, for a period of at least two consecutive quarters.

By that definition, in the United States, the Great Recession started in December 2007. From that time, until the event's end, GDP declined by 4.3 percent, and the unemployment rate approached 10 percent.

Causes of the Recession

The Great Recession-sometimes referred to as the 2008 Recession-in the United States and Western Europe has been linked to the so-called "subprime mortgage crisis."

Subprime mortgages are home loans granted to borrowers with poor credit histories. Their home loans are considered high-risk loans.

With the housing boom in the United States in the early to mid-2000s, mortgage lenders seeking to capitalize on rising home prices were less restrictive in terms of the types of borrowers they approved for loans. And as housing prices continued to rise in North America and Western Europe, other financial institutions acquired thousands of these risky mortgages in bulk (typically in the form of mortgage-backed securities) as an investment, in hopes of a quick profit.

These decisions, however, would soon prove catastrophic.

Subprime Crisis

Although the U.S. housing market was still fairly robust at the time, the writing was on the wall when subprime mortgage lender New Century Financial declared bankruptcy in April 2007. A couple of months earlier, in February, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) announced that it would no longer purchase risky subprime mortgages or mortgage-related securities.

With no market for the mortgages it owned, and therefore no way to sell them to recoup their initial investment, New Century Financial collapsed. Just a few months later, in August 2007, American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. became the second major mortgage lender to crack under the pressure of the subprime crisis and the declining housing market when it entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

That summer, Standard and Poor's and Moody's credit ratings services both announced their intention to reduce the ratings on more than 100 bonds backed by second-lien subprime mortgages. Standard and Poor's also placed more than 600 securities backed by subprime residential mortgages on "credit watch."

By then, as the subprime crisis continued, housing prices across the country began to fall, due to a glut of new homes on the market, so millions of homeowners-and their mortgage lenders-were suddenly "underwater," meaning their homes were valued less than their total loan amounts.

Fed Drops Interest Rates

Interestingly, on October 9, 2007, the U.S. stock market reached its all-time high, as the key Dow Jones Industrial Average exceeded 14,000 for the first time in history.

However, that would mark the last bit of good news for the U.S. economy for some time.

Over the next 18 months, the Dow would lose more than half its value, falling to 6,547 points. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Americans who had significant portions of their life saving invested in the stock market suffered catastrophic financial losses.

Indeed, over the course of the Great Recession, the net worth of American households and non-profits declined by more than 20 percent from a high of $69 trillion in the fall of 2007 to $55 trillion in the spring of 2009-a loss of some $14 trillion.

With the American economy teetering, the U.S. Federal Reserve (or "Fed") began taking action, reducing the national target interest rate, which lenders use as a guide for setting rates on loans.

Interest rates were at 5.25 percent in September 2007. By the end of 2008, the Fed had reduced the target interest rate to zero percent for the first time in history in hopes of once again encouraging borrowing and, by extension, capital investment.

Stimulus Package

Of course, lowering the target interest rate wasn't the only thing the Fed and the U.S. government did to combat the Great Recession and minimize its effects on the economy.

In February 2008, President George W. Bush signed the so-called Economic Stimulus Act into law. The legislation provided taxpayers with rebates ($600 to $1,200), which they were encouraged to spend; reduced taxes; and increased the loan limits for federal home loan programs (for example, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac).

This last element was designed to, hopefully, generate new home sales and provide a boost to the economy. The so-called "Stimulus Package" also provided businesses with financial incentives for capital investment.

Too Big to Fail

However, even with these interventions, the country's economic troubles were far from over. In March 2008, investment banking giant Bear Stearns collapsed after attributing its financial troubles to investments in subprime mortgages, and its assets were acquired by JP Morgan Chase at a cut-rate price.

A few months later, financial behemoth Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy for similar reasons, creating the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history. Within days of the Lehman Brothers' announcement, the Fed agreed to lend insurance and investment company AIG some $85 billion so that it could remain afloat.

Political leaders justified the decision, saying AIG was "too big to fail," and that its collapse would further destabilize the U.S. economy.

TARP Program

With fears that similar collapses could be sustained by other major financial companies and banks, President Bush approved the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in October 2008. TARP essentially provided the U.S. government with $700 billion in funds to purchase the assets of struggling companies in order to keep them in business. The deals would enable the government to sell these assets at a later date, hopefully at a profit.

Within a few weeks, the government spent $125 billion in TARP funds in acquiring assets from nine U.S. banks. In early 2009, TARP funds were also used to bail out automakers General Motors and Chrysler (a combined $80 billion) and banking giant Bank of America ($125 billion).

January 2009 also brought with it a new administration in the White House, that of President Barack Obama. However, many of the old financial problems remained for the new president to tackle.

In his first few weeks in office, President Obama signed a second "Stimulus Package" into law, this time earmarking $787 billion for tax cuts as well as spending on infrastructure, schools, health care and green energy.

Whether or not these initiatives brought about the end of the Great Recession is a matter of debate. However, at least officially, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) determined that, based on key economic indicators (including unemployment rates and the stock market), the downturn in the United State officially ended in June 2009.

Aftermath of the Great Recession

Although the Great Recession was officially over in the United States in 2009, among many people in America and in other countries around the world, the effects of the downturn were felt for many more years.

Indeed, from 2010 through 2014, multiple European countries-including Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Cyprus-defaulted on their national debts, forcing the European Union to provide them with "bailout" loans and other cash investments.

These countries were also compelled to implement "austerity" measures-such as tax increases and cuts to social benefit programs (including healthcare and retirement programs)-to repay their debts.

Dodd-Frank Act

The Great Recession also ushered in a new period of financial regulation in the United States and elsewhere. Economists have argued that repeal in the 1990s of the Depression-era regulation known as the Glass-Steagall Act contributed to the problems that caused the recession.

While the truth is probably more complicated than that, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had been on the books since 1933, did allow many of the country's larger financial institutions to merge, creating much larger companies. This set the stage for the "too big to fail" bailouts of many of these firms by the government.

The Dodd-Frank Act, which was signed into law by President Obama in 2010, was designed to restore at least some of the U.S. government's regulatory power over the financial industry.

Dodd-Frank enabled the federal government to assume control of banks deemed to be on the brink of financial collapse and by implementing various consumer protections designed to safeguard investments and prevent "predatory lending"-banks that provide high-interest loans to borrowers who likely will have difficulty paying.

After he was inaugurated, President Donald Trump and some members of Congress made several efforts to gut key portions of the Dodd-Frank Act, which would remove some of the rules protecting Americans from another recession.

Sources

Rich, Robert. "The Great Recession." Federalreservehistory.org.
"New Century files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy." Reuters.com.
Full Timeline. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
"Bush signs stimulus bill; rebate checks expected in May." CNN.com.
"JPMorgan scoops up troubled Bear." CNN.com.
Glass, Andrew. "Bush signs bank bailout, Oct. 3, 2008." Politico.com.
Amadeo, Kimberly. "Auto Industry Bailout (GM, Chrysler, Ford)." thebalance.com.
"Bank of America gets big government bailout. Reuters.com.
"Obama Signs Stimulus Plan Into Law." CBSNews.com.
Isidore, Chris. "Recession officially ended in June 2009." CNN.com.
The Christian Science Monitor. "Timeline on the Great Recession." CSMonitor.com.
"European Debt Crisis Fast Facts." CNN.com.
Zarroli, Jim. "Fact Check: Did Glass-Steagall Cause The 2008 Financial Crisis?" NPR.com.
"Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act." Investopedia.com.
Senate Banking Committee introduces repeal of Dodd-Frank Act. HousingWire.

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Great Recession - Definition, Cause & 2008 | HISTORY

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The Great Recession, which began in late 2007, roiled world financial markets as the longest period of economic decline since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

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The legacy of George W. Bush remains, much like his 2000 election, a subject of profound controversy, and any truly objective evaluation will likely be years in the future. He entered office as one of only a handful Presidents to lose the nation's popular vote. The election of 2000 and the Supreme Court case of Bush v. Gore remain two of the most controversial political developments in the last half-century. Some thought that President Bush should begin his term by trying to find common ground and avoid controversy to take some of the edge off the nation's polarized politics coming out of the 2000 election. Instead, as one of his first actions, President Bush issued an executive order creating the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which further alienated some who thought government money should not go to organizations affiliated with churches. Yet he did reach across the aisle on other issues including the No Child Left Behind Act, which was the most impactful change in education policy in a generation.

Within nine months of taking office, President Bush was afforded the chance to unite the nation after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. By most accounts, Bush did a masterful job of speaking for and to the American people. His crisis leadership, including insisting on returning to the White House the night of the attacks instead of holing up in a safe bunker elsewhere, gave the American people confidence that someone was in charge. He became the most popular President in the history of polling, reaching an astounding 90 percent approval rating in the wake of the attacks.

Following an authorization from Congress to eliminate those who perpetrated the attacks of 9/11, Bush ordered an invasion of Afghanistan. The Taliban leadership was driven into the mountains and across the boarders into neighboring countries, including Pakistan. Those early successes, however, turned into the longest war in American history, and the President never was able to achieve the greatest symbolic goal of the effort, the killing or capturing of the mastermind of the attacks, Osama bin Laden; U.S. special forces achieved that goal in 2011 under Bush's successor, President Barack Obama.

Following the 9/11 attacks, President Bush also presided over a restructuring of the American national security apparatus and the passage of the Patriot Act, which gave the government vast new powers in the effort to combat future acts of terror. Both efforts, especially the Patriot Act, sparked strong divisions within the American people throughout the Bush presidency. In 2002 and into 2003, Bush used the fear of further terrorist attacks to argue for a preemptive war on Saddam Hussein's Iraq under the rationale that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The initial attacks and invasion were extremely successful and popular but in the end no weapons of mass destruction were found anywhere in the country and a strong insurgency arose that resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 Americans over the next eight years. The war grew increasingly unpopular, and the Democrats used it as a major wedge issue in the 2006 and 2008 elections, in which they first took over Congress and then the White House two years later.

On the domestic front, the Bush presidency scored early successes in gaining passage of large tax reductions and a major reform of the American educational system with the No Child Left Behind Act. The tax cuts, however, were not made permanent, as the President wished, and the bipartisan education reforms proved very controversial with their emphasis on testing and school report cards. The tax cuts were eventually made permanent during budget negotiations in the Obama administration but No Child Left Behind was eventually replaced with a new national education plan in 2015.

After his reelection in 2004, Bush sought major changes to Social Security, arguing a partial privatization plan could insure its solvency. He spent considerable political capital seeking such a change, but his efforts went nowhere in Congress. He also sought major immigration reforms that never materialized. As the tax cuts of 2001 reduced revenue to the government, while spending continued to increase partly due to the expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the federal government racked up large deficits. Ultimately, those deficits, exacerbated by the financial recession of 2008, helped create a politically impactful insurgency on the political right that went under the banner of the "Tea Party." The last few months of the Bush presidency were marked by a major crash of the stock market, a controversial bail out of financial institutions and car companies, and a recession that would wipe out millions of jobs and impact the U.S. economy for many years.

The Bush presidency transformed American politics, its economy, and its place in the world, but not in ways that could have been predicted when the governor of Texas declared his candidacy for America's highest office. As President, Bush became a lightning rod for controversy. His controversial election and policies, especially the war in Iraq, deeply divided the American people. Arguably his greatest moment as President was his initial, heartfelt response to the tragedy of the 9/11 attacks. Soon, however, his administration was overshadowed by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. President Bush's place in U.S. history will be debated and reconsidered for many years to come.

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George W. Bush: Impact and Legacy | Miller Center

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The legacy of George W. Bush remains, much like his 2000 election, a subject of profound controversy, and any truly objective evaluation will likely be years in the future. He entered office as one of only a handful Presidents to lose the nation's popular vote.

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Which would you get hooked on?

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Finally, an answer to the question: Where did Guy Fieri come from?!

Malcolm Ali Getty Images

The year 2000 was 20(!) years ago. There are TikTok stars that weren’t even BORN then, people!!! Let that fact sink in a minute. While you were busy wishing you could have your birthday be on My Super Sweet Sixteen, or that Ashton Kutcher and his Punk’d crew were around the corner pranking you, or that you were getting real with your Real World roomies, or that you could spend your days with The Osbournes and Nicole and Paris on The Simple Life and all the contestants on Flavor of Love, there were a lot of other shows that deserved your attention back then. Okay, "deserved" is a strong word. Nonetheless, these shows have now become fuzzy memories. With reality TV shows becoming increasingly popular in the late ‘90s, the early-aughts were filled with some trial and a lot of error. Mostly error. Here are 22 shows that aired between 2000-2005 you might have tried to block entirely from your mind.

1 of 22

'Food Network Star'

Ever wonder where Guy Fieri came from? Your wildest dreams. It was second season of this reality series that started in 2005, that plucked the bleach blonde host out of obscurity and let him loose on diners, drive-ins and dives.

2 of 22

'My Fair Brady'

Top Model alum Adrianne Curry and her beau Christopher Knight, aka Bobby Brady from The Brady Bunch, met on VH1's The Surreal Life. This dating show followed their lives—i.e., they spent a lot of time fighting about if they'd get married or not.

3 of 22

'Road Rules'

If you watch The Challenge, you’ll know that people like Tori Hall, Abram Boise, and Veronica Portillo are regulars...but did ya know they all got their start on Road Rules?! As a traveling counterpart to The Real World, this long running show that started way back in 1995, put strangers in an RV and sent them out to solve puzzles and compete for a chance at a prize.

4 of 22

'WWE Tough Enough'

For those with dreams of becoming a professional wrestler, Tough Enough put contestants through the ringer as they worked with WWE stars in some knockdown, drag out fights.

5 of 22

'Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica'

It seems so long ago that Nick Lachey of 98 Degrees and pop singer Jessica Simpson were married, so it might be easy to forget the series that followed them around. Though it is really hard to forget that she didn’t understand that Chicken of the Sea was tuna fish.

6 of 22

'The Ashlee Simpson Show'

Following in her sister's footsteps, Ashlee also had a reality show. This docu-series followed Simpson as she launched her first album and set out on tour.

7 of 22

'Date My Mom'

MTV series Parental Control aimed to have disapproving parents pick better partners for their kids, but this show offered a different twist. Instead of a teen meeting their potential mate, they would meet three moms who would gush about their kids and try and convince them to pick their kid.

8 of 22

'Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County'

Before The Hills, there was Laguna Beach. This teen “reality” series focused on Lauren “LC” Conrad, Stephen Coletti and Kristin Cavillari and all their high school rich kid drama—but even then you could tell that the drama played out like a scripted soap. Once the main cast left for The Hills, there was a third season with a new crop of Laguna high schoolers, that is barely even worth mentioning.

9 of 22

'Next'

Before there was Tinder, there was Next. This 2005 dating show featured contestants on speed dates. The idea: to see how long they could last before they were “nexted.”

10 of 22

'The Swan'

So, um, plastic surgery was hugely popular, and so were makeover shows. The Swan capitalized on that by giving women multiple surgeries, wrapping them up like mummies and then revealing their new beautiful look. To be fair, the series ABC series Extreme Makeover did the same thing… but Fox’s 2004 show featured a cruel twist where they made these women who already had a host of self-esteem issues compete in a pageant to see who was the most beautiful. Sigh.

11 of 22

'Surf Girls'

This 2003 series aimed to capitalize on the popularity of the movie Blue Crush, following the lives of competitive surfers angling to win a spot on the professional circuit.

12 of 22

'Murder in Small Town X'

This 2001 series was basically an escape room. The contestants were sent to a small town in Maine to investigate a series of fictional murders. Clues would be revealed and contestants were “killed off” weekly.

13 of 22

'Are You Hot?'

Billed as “The Search for America’s Sexiest People,” this 2003 ABC series had buff guys and gals up on a stage being judged by Lorenzo Lamas and a laser pointer. Again, sigh.

14 of 22

'Boy Meets Boy'

This Bravo series from 2003 was touted as the gay version of The Bachelor, but the twist? Unbeknownst to bachelor James Getzlaff, half of the suitors on the show were straight men pretending to be gay for a chance to win $25K if they managed to trick James into picking them. Again again, sigh.

15 of 22

'The Girls Next Door'

This E! television series followed the wild adventures of Hugh Hefner and his playmate girlfriends who lived in the house next to the infamous Playboy Mansion. Kendra Wilkinson, Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt.

16 of 22

'Britney and Kevin: Chaotic'

Before Britney Spears started documenting her life on TikTok, she filmed herself, along with her then-husband Kevin Federline, for this reality docudrama. Chaotic doesn't even begin to describe this show.

17 of 22

'Beauty and the Geek'

The producers of this show had clearly watched a lot of Weird Science growing up. This 2005 WB show (that ran for five seasons and spawned international versions), took beautiful women who were “dumb” and paired them with a geeky “smart” guy. The partners had to compete in contestants each week, but the show relied on a lot (like A LOT) of stereotypes. I'm out of sighs!!!!

18 of 22

'Growing Up Gotti'

Premiering in 2004, this A&E show put the spotlight on Victoria Gotti, daughter of notorious Mob boss John Gotti, and her three sons.

19 of 22

'Room Raiders'

Have you met someone online who looked nice and put together in their profile, only to get to their house and find some hidden secrets about them? This show let one single guy or girl “meet” their prospective dates by poking around in their bedrooms unattended. There’s an episode with a very young Zac Efron promoting his show Summerland, which you can watch now thanks to the wonder of YouTube.

20 of 22

'Mr. Personality'

Masks are a way of life now, but when this dating show aired in 2003, it was just plain creepy. A bachelorette would be able to choose suitors based on their personalities (though she could still see most of their faces and bodies, so it was kind of pointless). Monica Lewinsky hosted this hot mess, and it only lasted five episodes.

21 of 22

'Joe Millionaire'

Following along with the trend of tricking people on dating shows, Joe Millionaire claimed that their bachelor, Evan Marriott, was a rich man looking for love. Cue the potential gold-digging brides who were wined and dined before finding out their prince charming was really a construction worker. 😕

22 of 22

'The Surreal Life'

This VH1 series, where B-list celebrities were put in a house to compete in challenges, was a launchpad for so many shows. From Strange Love (with Flavor Flav), which then spawned Flavor of Love, Rock of Love and I Love New York, to The Surreal Life: Fame Games, My Fair Brady, and The Salt-N-Pepa Show.

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Enjoy: Early-2000s Reality TV Shows You Def Forgot About (or, Uh, Wished You Forgot About)

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Finally, an answer to the question: Where did Guy Fieri come from?!

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Do you have a fave?

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Since its inception in 2005, YouTube has become a home to many things - a place for people to post historic clips, to flaunt their inner selves, to share their latest creation, to share dangerous misinformation. But at its core, YouTube is a place to get lost for hours in viral content. Here, a quick rundown of the most memorable viral videos of the site's early days, from animated clips to news reports gone wrong to an adorable child calling Will Ferrell a bitch.
Evolution of Dance (2006)
Simplicity was the most important part of early YouTube. Back when the platform kicked off, users and viewers were still figuring out what it was even for. Judson Laipply was touring as inspirational comedian at the time, and uploaded a video from one of his shows. Grainy and shot from the audience, Laipply's six-minute video captured decades of popular dances from Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" hip swivel to 'N Sync's "Bye Bye Bye." His "Evolution of Dance" video was briefly the most popular video of all time on YouTube and now has multiple sequels, especially now that social media itself has become the biggest breeding ground for new dance fads.
Shoes (2006)
Sure, "Shoes" never became a massive hit song, but the video itself was a masterpiece of the comedic parody song trend that gained momentum after the Lonely Island's "Lazy Sunday" took off a year earlier. Written by and starring comedian Liam Kyle Sullivan, "Shoes" is told from the perspective of a Valley Girl-esque young woman named Kelly (played by Sullivan) who just wants shoes for her birthday. Sullivan's song became a viral sensation, racking up millions of views. It's a perfect dance-pop time capsule, and predicated the type of quick-cut musical moments that would take over viral video culture through TikTok this past year. Plus, Sullivan's Kelly took on a life of her own, even making a cameo in a Weezer video two years later.
End of Ze World (2006)
Hokay, so: If you went to college in the mid-aughts, there is a 100 million percent chance that someone got you high in their dorm room and showed you this iconic Flash animation video outlining a potential global apocalyptic scenario. Of course, now that the end of the world actually seems semi-plausible, it's slightly less funny, but the fact that people still regularly say "but I am le tired" on group texts as an excuse to avoid going out is a testament to the video's cultural significance.
Crichton Leprechaun (2006)
Ah, the mid-aughts, a time when earnest local news reports were the bread and butter of the viral internet. In this clip, the citizens of Crichton, a neighborhood of Mobile, Alabama, enthusiastically describe a recent rash of leprechaun sightings in their neighborhood. The Crichton leprechaun video hasn't exactly aged well, with many in recent years correctly criticizing it for trafficking in offensive stereotypes (if Bill O'Reilly says a thing is racist, then honestly it probably is). Nonetheless, the crude "amateur sketch" of the folkloric figure in question is likely to still elicit a chuckle.
"Grape Lady" (2006)
Georgia's Château Élan winery just wanted to have a fun little contest on their local Fox affiliate, with reporter Melissa Sander and a winery employee rapidly stomping grapes to see who could make the most juice. But when Sanders got a little fancy with some last-minute steps, she took a plunge off the platform, falling several feet onto the ground. What took it from your standard America's Funniest Home Video-blooper reel fare to something worthy of a Family Guy send-up were her yelps of pain - and the fact that the camera crew took an uncomfortably long time to cut away. In retrospect, when she yells that she can't breathe, it's more than a little cringe-worthy - especially now that we know she ended up with several broken ribs and a lengthy hospital stay.
"Charlie Bit My Finger" (2007)
Some things are just cute, and "Charlie Bit My Finger" is one of those things. Two young, British brothers hang out on their family couch as the older and more verbal one narrates his teething baby bro's attempts to bite his finger. The video has over 800 million views and was the most viewed and liked video on the platform for years.
"Dramatic Look" (2007)
Animated GIFs have been around since the late Eighties, but they became a major part of the way we communicate with each other online in the Aughts thanks to blogs and social media. The "reaction GIF" in itself has become an art form. Back in 2007, YouTube helped speed things up when an image of a prairie dog making a dramatic turn was ripped from a longer video titled " horrorbeaver." Equally dramatic music was added and the video became an early YouTube meme, with various users adding a Dr. Evil pinkie or a monocle to the Vine-length clip (which pre-dated the six-second video sharing app by a decade).
"Leave Britney Alone" (2007)
What would any corner of the internet be without moments of intense fandom? Chris Crocker engaged with this in 2007 at the height of Britney Spears' dismally covered fall from grace. From beneath a blanket and sporting very 2007 black eyeliner, Crocker posted "Leave Britney Alone, pt. 1" on his MySpace page, defending the star. When he posted the second part on YouTube, his tearful, passionate pleas became a heavily-imitated and popular clip. Spears stans identified with his dismay at how the media was treating the troubled star while outsiders were perplexed by the level of emotion being displayed. Dramatic vlogs are still an integral part of YouTube and making a bit of a comeback thanks to well-spread "apology vlogs" from various stars on their popular channels.
"Chocolate Rain" (2007)
Many musical hopefuls have turned to the internet to find fame (and maybe a recording contract). Lots of artists have been proven successful: Justin Bieber, Lana Del Rey, and the Weeknd were discovered via YouTube while Shawn Mendes built his audience through Vine. Very few, however, have found the immediate success of Tay Zonday, whose only hit "Chocolate Rain" was uploaded to YouTube in 2007. The video is simple: Zonday sang his self-penned song about systemic racism in America in his apartment with some captions about how he moves away from the microphone to breathe while singing. The video and song were massive within months, originally gaining momentum through 4chan. It's one of the early one-hit wonders of the YouTube era, and made the necessary space for even more to exist through all forms of video-sharing tools years later.
"Don't Tase me, Bro" (2007)
Some aspects of YouTube's viral culture became bigger than actually viewing a video. Take, for example, footage of a student being tased at University of Florida during an event featuring Senator John Kerry. During the question-and-answer portion, Andrew Meyer asked whether or not Kerry was a member of a secret society called Skull and Bones and was immediately removed and tased. His shouts of "Don't tase me, bro!" became an almost-immediate meme, growing larger than the actual reason why he was tased or where it happened. That year, the phrase became part of the cultural lexicon, bringing light to the issues of free speech and police brutality that it raised.
"The Landlord" (2007)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a very small child cursing is extremely funny. This is the central (and frankly, sole) conceit of "The Landlord," Will Ferrell's viral video with frequent collaborator Adam McKay and McKay's adorable 2-year-old daughter Pearl (who is now a Snapchat filter-using teen. They grow up so fast!) Ferrell's deadpan reaction to Pearl's torrent of verbal abuse is the icing on the cake. It was the first video produced by their Funny Or Die platform, which would go on to create juggernauts like Billy on the Street, Drunk History, and Between Two Ferns.
"David After Dentist" (2009)
Nothing is more constant in our viral video ecosystem then kids being wacky. And nothing spread quite like "David After Dentist," a home video of a seven-year-old's loopy response to anesthesia after oral surgery. Filmed by his dad, an adorably incoherent David asks why he feels this way before hoisting himself off the backseat to scream before slumping back down. The video felt like the logical evolution of popular, family-friendly shows like America's Funniest Home Videos and Kids Say the Darndest Things, and with YouTube and later Instagram, Twitter, Vine and TikTok, those short and hilarious at-home moments can be consumed 24/7 (and maybe get you a segment on Ellen).
Antoine Dodson/"Bed Intruder" remix (2010)
The news story itself is pretty brutal: a woman named Kelly Dodson was nearly raped in her room by an intruder-at-large. Thankfully, she was okay and capable of spreading the word via a local news report. Her brother, Antoine, was reasonably furious. "Hide yo' kids, hide yo' wife," went his warning. His colorful speech went immediately viral on YouTube but that was only the beginning until musical comedy act the Gregory Brothers got ahold of it as part of their "Autotune the News" series. With their signature pitch correction and Auto-Tune, the group turned the traumatic story into a certified hit that broke into Billboard's Hot 100. Dodson himself became a star, appearing in Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas and getting parodied in the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt opening credits. His trajectory was imitated years later by Bhad Bhabie, whose appearance on Dr. Phil would spark a Hot 100-charting remix.

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Since its inception in 2005, YouTube has become a home to many things - a place for people to post historic clips, to flaunt their inner selves, to share their latest creation, to share dangerous misinformation. But at its core, YouTube is a place to get lost for hours in viral content.

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Look at what the Affordable Care Act did when it was first put in place

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#block-nodeblock-268981 { height: 422px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 32px; } #block-nodeblock-218856 { height: 85px; padding-top: 360px; } p.health-intro { font-size:15px !important; } li.vs-title{ margin: 0px !important; }On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into la…

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Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States-becoming the first African American to serve in that office-on January 20, 2009.

The son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father, Obama grew up in Hawaii. Leaving the state to attend college, he earned degrees from Columbia University and Harvard Law School. Obama worked as a community organizer in Chicago, where he met and married Michelle LaVaughn Robinson in 1992. Their two daughters, Malia Ann and Natasha (Sasha), were born in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Obama was elected to the Illinois state senate in 1996 and served there for eight years. In 2004, he was elected by a record majority to the US Senate from Illinois and, in February 2007, announced his candidacy for president. After winning a closely fought contest against New York Senator and former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination, Obama handily defeated Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee for president, in the general election.

When President Obama took office, he faced very significant challenges. The economy was officially in a recession, and the outgoing administration of George W. Bush had begun to implement a controversial "bail-out" package to try to help struggling financial institutions. In foreign affairs, the United States still had troops deployed in difficult conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During the first two years of his first term, President Obama was able to work with the Democratic-controlled Congress to improve the economy, pass health-care reform legislation, and withdraw most US troops from Iraq. After the Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in 2010, the president spent significant time and political effort negotiating, for the most part unsuccessfully, with congressional Republicans about taxes, budgets, and the deficit. After winning reelection in 2012, Obama began his second term focused on securing legislation on immigration reform and gun control, neither of which he was able to achieve. When the Republicans won the Senate in 2014, Obama refocused on actions that he could take unilaterally, invoking his executive authority as president. In foreign policy, Obama concentrated during the second term on the Middle East and climate change.

Obama left the presidency, at age fifty-five, after his constitutionally limited two terms ended on January 20, 2017. He announced plans to remain in Washington, DC, until his younger daughter finished high school and, as a former president, to play a restrained but active role in public affairs. He also devoted energy to raising money and planning for the opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, Illinois.

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Barack Obama: Life in Brief | Miller Center

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Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States-becoming the first African American to serve in that office-on January 20, 2009. The son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father, Obama grew up in Hawaii. Leaving the state to attend college, he earned degrees from Columbia University and Harvard Law School.

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Jesse D. Garrabrant/Getty Images

It all began 15 years ago, with 14 oversized suits, each awful in its own right.

There were extra buttons, too much fabric, too many pant cuffs scraping the floor. It is said that Steve Harvey deserves blame for what happened. That it was Michael Jordan's fault. That maybe it was P. Diddy and Sean John.

On June 26, 2003, four future Hall of Famers entered the league: LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. But the memory of that historic occasion is, all these years later, tinted in yellow, and in dark purply-brown, and in white cream. The suits worn that night by the '03 super-rookies—and by all present draftees—will live on in infamy, haunting the greatness of that class forever.

It is said that, on draft night in '03, Kirk Hinrich resembled a kid on his way to his First Communion. That Jarvis Hayes might have thought, "F--k it, I'm gonna button all of these, I don't know where to start or end." That the pants were the worst part—that, no, it's got to be the collars—that, no, no, just look at those shoes.

(Programming note: Check out ‘The 2000s’ on CNNTV and CNNgo Sundays at 9p ET/PT starting July 8.)

There are a number of interconnected theories and stories that help explain what happened. But what's clear is that the suits were bad and, ironically, that we can point to the 2003 draft as a jumping-off point for NBA fashion as we now know it.

Today, James totes a $41,000 alligator bag; Anthony wears fur hats to postgame pressers; Wade designs his own ties; and Bosh owns upward of 55 pairs of dress shoes.

How did we get here? To find out, all you have to do is turn back the clock—and shield your eyes.

The Panel

Dwyane Wade, No. 5 pick

Jarvis Hayes, No. 10 pick

Reece Gaines, No. 15 pick

Calyann Barnett, stylist for Wade

Khalilah Beavers, stylist for Anthony

Waraire Boswell, designer to James, Wade, Anthony and Bosh

Rachel Johnson, stylist for James and Bosh

Sami Jenks, stylist at Elevee; styled James and Anthony for 2003 draft

The Genesis

Nathaniel S. Butler/Getty Images

Johnson: I remember the photo vividly.

Beavers: That photo is one of a kind.

Barnett: Every time I look at the picture, I have to burn it out of my head. Now it's burning back in.

Gaines: We swore we all looked good, man, I tell you!

Beavers: They look like preachers and deacons.

Wade: It was just a different time when we came in. Hip-hop culture had a big effect on fashion. At the time, hip-hop culture was baggy jeans, Sean John jeans, hats to the side—that was the Allen Iverson culture. That's where the NBA was when we first got in.

Johnson: Right around this time was the whole metamorphosis between rappers and athletes. It was right before athletes really started mimicking their favorite rappers, wanting to emulate them. Up until then, it's clear they wanted to emulate the players that came before them, like a Michael Jordan sort of style, or an Allen Iverson style.

Boswell: They were from inner-city areas that are rich in love but not finance. So you're dressing in whatever the regional guy thinks is hot.

Beavers: Where they came from, nobody wore tight clothes, everything was baggy. It was a learning process for everybody, there was a curve. It may have looked good at the time, because that's what they knew. The NBA player until now has never been a forward guy.

Hayes: Think about the Michael Jordan-Allen Iverson era that started the baggy clothes look. It was the baggy suit era. I got [my suit] from a close family friend out in Georgia. I doubt if they're still in business now if they're still making suits like that. You wouldn't catch me dead in a suit that size.

Barnett: Everyone looks like they're wearing someone else's suit. If everyone passed their suit around, they might fit.

Jenks: There were no rules! There are rules now in fashion—coats should be a certain length in proportion to your body, and sleeve length, pants length. There are rules that are very important now as I dress my clients. Back then, there were no rules, just: The longer, the bigger, the better.

The No. 1 Pick: LeBron James

Jennifer Pottheiser/Getty Images

Jenks: Obviously LeBron wore all white. That had to have been a request from him—we wouldn't have said, "Hey, let's wear all white!" We like to tap into what they may want to wear and then we guide them. We just brought his dreams to life.

Gaines: LeBron had the all-white Jesus suit. There was a rumor he was gonna do that, so I was prepared to see him in all white.

Hayes: LeBron in the all-white! I thought he was fly. You didn't see too many people walking around in white suits, but shoot, he's LeBron, he could do whatever he wants to do. He pulled it off if you ask me.

Barnett: I think Dwyane said it best: "It looks like he took the hotel bedsheets and just wrapped them around him."

Wade: It was a choice—I'll tell you that. At the time, it wasn't bad. It was like everyone knew he'd be the No. 1 pick, and he came out in the all-white suit. Obviously the suit was huge now that you look back, but it at the time, it was kinda dope.

Johnson: It's obviously cut much too big for him, there are way too many buttons, the lapel is too high. All of that white is something I feel like a gentleman getting married would wear, or a minister christening children. Those shoes [laughs]. Wow.

Barnett: Those black-and-white, like, gator shoes. It looks like he's going to prom.

Jennifer Pottheiser/Getty Images

Beavers: He looks like a marshmallow. You couldn't miss him.

The No. 3 Pick: Carmelo Anthony

M. David Leeds/Getty Images

Jenks: It was our signature style that we put him in that year. We designed that signature look, and he wore it very well, and it was pretty well-received. I dressed Drew Gooden in that as well [in 2002]. When we did this, people loved it. At the time, trust me, this was hot. This was hot!

Wade: His was very interesting. It was like a trench coat suit. Melo was probably the worst one out of everyone. Over time, everyone's cracking jokes, that I look like a deacon or—there's certain things they say. With Melo's suit, it's, "Wait a minute, Melo. What were you going for? What was the vibe?" Wherever [he bought the suit], I don't think they've done much since.

Barnett: Carmelo just made his own kind of suit. It was like a vest suit, no lapel, Dr. Evil jacket.

Gaines: Melo had the super-extra baggy! I think his fashion game has improved a lot since then. His was one of the worst, looking back on it.

Beavers: Melo's outfit looks like something—whew—I don't know. I don't even know what to call it. They all had the Steve Harvey back-in-the-day thing going on.

Johnson: The tailoring leaves something to be desired. The shirt and tie combination is lackluster at best. It's very drab. But even if he wanted to wear gray with a white shirt and a gray tie, there's a way to do that beautifully. How many buttons did Melo have? Four, five, six buttons—and he only buttoned the top button!

Jenks: He is wearing eight or nine buttons.

The No. 4 Pick: Chris Bosh

M. David Leeds/Getty Images

Barnett: I honestly am going to go ahead and say Chris Bosh might have had the best suit on.

Wade: I know his suit jacket was long as s--t. I remember that. He's already tall and slender, and it was a lot of material. The jackets at the time went to the end of your hand, and we all have long arms—our hands go to our knees, so our jackets go down there. That's how it was fitted back then.

Johnson: The sleeve lengths on all these joints are just horrific.

Beavers: I hate that color, taupe. It looks like the old lady there at the church. The pants are huge and Chris is a slimmer person, so his pants could probably fit three of him in there.

Johnson: It's bad. It's all the buttons, that color—that manila folder, oh my God, it's so bad. That cuff at the bottom, and do you see those shoes? Do you see that cuff? You can see the seams at the side of the legs—that's how seams look when they're not ironed. Damn. I hope my boys don't get mad at me for talking s--t, but they know their suits are bad.

Boswell: Yeah man, this is—wow, that suit, bro. It's just big, man. It's super-duper big. Look at those pants! This is my brother, so I'm not gonna talk bad, but if he saw himself, he'd be like, "Man, I've come a long way."

The No. 5 Pick: Dwyane Wade

Jennifer Pottheiser/Getty Images

Wade: I got my suit from a designer, a suit maker in Chicago. I said I wanted a blue suit and a black suit—I'm gonna go with safe colors. I didn't know where I was getting drafted, so I went neutral. Guys who knew where they were getting drafted went with the team color vibe. It's funny when you look back at suits, nobody was doing tight stuff. The more leg rolls the better, that's what I thought. For the time, I was fresh. It wasn't as classic as I wanted it to be.

Jenks: He looked amazing at the time. It's more professional, more conservative, the dark color, the notch collar. He was probably going more for a business look.

Beavers: Dwyane looks like he works on Wall Street. It's just bad.

Barnett: I don't think it was a good look [even] in 2003. Dwyane's top isn't too terrible, but when you get down to the bottom it's like he's wearing somebody else's pants. They literally are like bell-bottoms. When I started working with Dwyane, for four years I was cleaning the suits out of his closet.

The Aftermath

Eric Gay/Associated Press

Gaines: After the draft, I get to Orlando, I'm like, "Why is Grant Hill wearing this skinny-ass suit?" I come to find out he looks great and I look ridiculous. He was already fitted, Italian-cut. He knew what the hell he was doing.

Hayes: I look at it now—I have the picture in my office at home—and I'm like, "What the hell were we thinking?" You see a picture of LeBron in his white baggy suit, and in the Finals he had on a suit with shorts! The times have changed.

Beavers: There was of course [the implementation of the 2005 dress code], so they had to dress a certain way. That's where it kind of all started for us. The guys saw it and the precedent was set. What do you do? There's no choice—you have to come in and look great.

Johnson: The reason these guys were wearing those giant suits was because they hadn't fully embraced their bodies yet. These are men who grew up taller than everyone, their clothes never fit, they had to wear hand-me-downs, their pants didn't fit, they were awkward, or whatever. So it took time for them to be confident with their bodies. [After the dress code], instead of wearing these clown suits and camouflaging themselves, it was all about embracing their bodies and showing how beautiful they are.

Hayes: There was a lot of guys that didn't like it, but I think the dress code kind of chaperoned the current era. As an athlete, the only way to express yourself was the way and manner in which you played. Once we knew the rule wasn't going anywhere, guys took that as another way of expressing themselves in a more colorful way.

Wade: When David Stern made the transition to change the image and the dress code, [fashion] took on a life of its own and became competitive amongst players. Then you got the stylists.

Beavers: [Melo and I] got rid of damn near everything. Within a year all of his previous clothes were not there anymore. We gave them away, donated them to friends, family, charity. I wouldn't be surprised if he still has [the draft suit] somewhere—it's a memorable occasion, and I'd never say throw it away, as horrible as it may be.

Johnson: In 2006, I remember the first time I went to LeBron's closet, how much stuff we got rid of, and how much we laughed at everything that was in there. He still had [his draft-night suit], of course, but he wasn't wearing that stuff anymore. It's a growth and evolution process.

Boswell: Now all the fashion houses want to dress these guys—that's largely due to stylists like me and Rachel and others. It was that tight-knit group of individuals who these guys would go to and say, "I gotta look right." And those who made that wise choice ended up reaping the benefits.

Hayes: We're getting back to the tight uniforms and suits. Now it's like John Stockton size, where you could see the tights under the shorts. I like the more tapered look now. I like the fit a little bit better. You don't get caught in the door when you're getting in the car.

Jenks: Fashion has evolved so much, men are practically wearing women's clothes—skin-tight garments. We're going to be doing this again when all the guys are wearing their girlfriends' pants, with their ankles out, and when they can barely button their tight jackets. We'll be doing this again. I'll be talking to you again in 15 years.

Editor's Note: Comments have been condensed and edited for clarity.

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15 Years Ago, the NBA’s Best Draft Class Wore the Worst Suits of Their Lives

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It all began 15 years ago, with 14 oversized suits, each awful in its own right. There were extra buttons, too much fabric, too many pant cuffs scraping the floor. It is said that Steve Harvey deserves blame for what happened...

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Netflix Wasn't Always a Streaming Platform

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Netflix Wasn't Always a Streaming Platform

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Programming note: Go back to the decade that's responsible for your smartphone and social media addictions: airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT starting July 8 on CNNTV and CNNgo.

It's hard to imagine now, but Netflix was fighting for relevance at the start of the 2000s. It burned through more than $50 million in 2000, struggled to hit 300,000 subscribers, and abandoned plans to go public as the dot com bubble burst. Eager for help, it turned to an unlikely source: Blockbuster.

Top execs at Netflix approached the leadership at Blockbuster, the dominant force in movie rentals at the time, about taking a roughly 50% stake in their startup. Together they'd expand the nascent DVD subscription service.

"They ultimately said, 'Why would we do that? We know more about the business than you do. If it's such a good business, we'll do it ourselves,'" recalls Netflix cofounder Mitch Lowe, who now leads MoviePass. "It only strengthened our resolve to show what idiots they had been."

You know how the story turned out. Today, Netflix rules the entertainment landscape with 130 million subscribers in nearly 200 countries, a growing slate of award-winning programming, and a market cap of more than $150 billion. That's on par with Disney. And Blockbuster? It filed for bankruptcy eight years ago and is down to a single remaining store.

Netflix outmaneuvered Blockbuster and rivals like Walmart by quickly reacting to emerging shifts in technology. Its biggest successes stemmed from a virtually unparalleled willingness to upend the business as larger rivals hesitated, according to interviews with current and former Netflix executives as well as industry experts.

When Netflix launched in 1997, it bet everything on DVDs even though VHS was the industry standard. The company made an unsuccessful attempt at filmmaking in the mid-2000s, long before it had an audience large enough to make it work financially. Then it invested in streaming when its own focus groups showed consumers knew so little about the concept that they confused "streaming" with "streamlining." People ridiculed Netflix in 2011 for its plans to split streaming and DVDs into two services, with the latter to be called Qwikster. Hundreds of thousands of customers canceled their subscriptions in the months that followed.

Related: Netflix has its first hits in India. It needs a lot more

Yet, each of these efforts proved prescient, if occasionally premature or poorly rolled out. Netflix bolted ahead of the major video rental chains, capitalized on faster internet delivery for streaming videos and spent billions outbidding traditional studios for original movies and TV shows, starting with "House of Cards." It is now taking steps to expand its media empire with a radio channel, comic books and merchandise.

"You have to lean so far forward that sometimes you fall on your face," says Todd Yellin, the company's VP of product, who joined Netflix in 2006. "That's really the path to innovation and success."

Netflix's ability to stay nimble and reorient itself are a direct reflection of CEO and cofounder Reed Hastings. He bounced from the Marine Corps to the Peace Corps before studying computer science in graduate school. He launched Pure Software in 1991 to help developers debug programs and claims a $40 late fee on a copy of "Apollo 13" inspired him to launch Netflix.

Hastings has "strategically re-positioned himself" throughout his career, says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, who teaches management at Yale. His "genius," Sonnenfeld says, is pushing Netflix to do the same. Many people in media circles find themselves "mystified" by Hastings' calm in making risky and expensive bets, says Todd Klein, a partner at Revolution Growth who focuses on media investments. "It's one thing to walk across a high wire," he says. "It's another to jump to another that's running parallel."

But Hastings has landed that jump repeatedly. He pushed Netflix away from an a la carte rental model to a subscription offering because there were "lots of people" already renting videos one by one, Lowe says. He quickly recognized that broadband would foster the rise of streaming. Netflix, he told his team in the 2000s, should "make [streaming] happen before someone else does," said former Netflix marketing executive Barry Enderwick. Today Netflix is spending $8 billion annually on new programming to keep customers binging online.

If foresight and focus were key to Netflix's survival, so was the delayed response of its more established rivals. Blockbuster didn't challenge Netflix with an online DVD rental service of its own until 2004. It took another two years before Blockbuster let customers return online rentals in stores, making the service more convenient and a greater threat to Netflix.

Related: Netflix added 5 million customers, but Wall Street is panicking

Enderwick remembers the Netflix team finding a number on Blockbuster envelopes that allowed them to keep tabs on the competitor's subscriber growth. They noticed the service did get "pretty significant traction." BlockBuster quickly topped two million subscribers by the end of 2006, or nearly half of Netflix's subscriber base at the time. But Netflix execs remained convinced the venture was too costly to sustain. Sure enough, Blockbuster raised prices after barely a year and cut its marketing budget for the service.

What really kept Netflix execs awake at night, however, was Amazon . In 2004, Netflix nixed plans to expand its DVD rental business into the UK amid rumors that Amazon was about to launch a competing service. Instead, Netflix doubled down on its home market, lowered prices and prepared for battle.

"Amazon was always really the only company that put fear into Netflix's executive team," Lowe says. And for good reason. Though Amazon never made much of a dent in the DVD rental market, it has pushed hard into the streaming market this decade.

Amazon is investing heavily in original content, acquiring critically acclaimed shows like "Transparent" and "Mozart in the Jungle." Amazon pairs these shows with expedited shipping, Whole Foods discounts, streaming music and more as part of a Prime membership service that actually costs slightly less than Netflix annually. Unlike Blockbuster years ago, Amazon has the financial muscle and long-term vision to maintain its Netflix rival for years.

For Netflix, beating Blockbuster and surviving the 2000s may turn out to be the easy part. Now Hastings must survive Jeff Bezos.

CNNMoney (New York) First published July 24, 2018: 3:52 PM ET

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How Netflix beat its rivals and survived the 2000s

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It's hard to imagine now, but Netflix was fighting for relevance at the start of the 2000s. It burned through more than $50 million in 2000, struggled to hit 300,000 subscribers, and abandoned plans to go public as the dot com bubble burst. Eager for help, it turned to an unlikely source: Blockbuster.