>>94292
>there are a lot less forums now compared to the past, the big social media sites have abused the search engines for a long time to monopolize most of the internet userbase, which coupled with the influx of phone idiots around 2007-2010 only worsened things

I'm not sure what that last part is referring to, since websites didn't start accommodating mobile users for several years after 2007, like not even close. More like 2011-2014 is a far more accurate range, when the online smartphone experience matured and websites started having a separate mobile and desktop version of a site. Before then, you would have the desktop site shrunk down or zoomed in and it was dreadful compared to what we have now in this smartphone-first centric world. Before 2012 it was all desktop-centric and having a smartphone-compatible version of your site was an afterthought. Trust me when I say this, in the date range you provided it was NOT enjoyable using the internet on a smartphone, which is something nearly everyone didn't have except businesses and the more financially well-off. The idea of spending over $300 on a phone was laughed at. See Steve Ballmer's reaction to the original iPhone, which was more of a novelty than anything. The app store didn't exist for another 2 years and aside from that, the iPhone was largely ignored outside of hardcore Apple users. Smartphones for years post-iPhone still had physical keyboards, puny screens that required you to scroll horizontally and vertically at a snail's pace to see the contents of a webpage, and you were lucky to be able to navigate using a finger rather than a stylus. See picrel for a refresher. You had to scroll a smidgen at a time using the directional keypad or have the precision of a sewer to use the stylus to grab the scrollbars and move without flinging yourself to the other end of a webpage. I'm exagerrating that last part but you pretty much used the internet on your phone in the pre-2011 days if you absolutely had to, not because it was at all preferrable or even easier to do on your desktop or laptop, especially considering half the time spent online on a phone was used waiting for the cellular connection to load the page or scrolling because your tiny 3-inch 480p pixelated screen couldn't fit even half of the webpage's contents. Other than that, you waited to get home, and choosing to use the Wi-Fi connection on your phone rather than the computer in front of you to use the internet was madness or masochism.

IIRC starting with the iPhone 4 and its new competitor the Samsung Galaxy S did the smartphone begin to start looking like a major life-changer to average customers, especially with the then-new idea of app stores instead of plugging your phone into your computer to transfer some cruddy Java applet.