Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. Dorsey posted his first tweet on 21 March 2006, and Twitter was publicly launched on 15 July.
The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was established in Paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), as a forum for multistakeholder policy dialogue. The mandate of the Forum is to discuss public policy issues related to key elements of internet governance, in order to foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability, and development of the internet. The IGF Secretariat, currently based at the United Nations Office at Geneva, conducts the preparations for the annual IGF meetings, coordinates the IGF intersessional activities (between two annual meetings), and assists the MAG in its work.
The second phase of WSIS, held in Tunis, concludes with the adoption of two documents: the Tunis Commitment and the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society . The two documents underline three main areas of action: the identification of financial mechanisms to be used in overcoming the digital divide, the promotion of debates on Internet governance, and the implementation of the WSIS documents. The Tunis Agenda also contains a definition for the term Internet governance (as proposed by the Working group on Internet Governance), and it mandates the UN Secretary General to convene the Internet Governance Forum.
The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) holds its first annual meeting in Athens, Greece. The forum, convened by the UN Secretary-General, is intended to serve as a platform to ‘discuss public policy issues related to key elements of internet governance in order to foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability, and development of the Internet’. The IGF mandate is detailed in paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society.
The forum will continue to hold meetings on an annual basis.
After several meetings in 2004 and 2005, the Working Group on Internet Governance issues its report which: (a) proposes a working definition for internet governance; (b) identifies public policy issues that are relevant to internet governance; and (c) explores the roles and responsibilities of various actors (governments, the private sector, civil society, as well as academia and the technical community) in internet governance. The group also suggests the creation of a multistakeholder forum for dialogue on internet-related public policy issues.
PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim created a video-sharing website where users could upload, share and view content. YouTube was activated on 14 February 2005.
Facebook is born. The era of social networking begins. The Facebook website was launched on 4 February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.