The earliest on-screen URL

Of course the concept of a proper extensive programme website has partially died off as well, instead linking to a glorified iplayer page or a facebook page.

There may have been other shows that did datablasts too, looking at the comments of Tom Scott's video.

On a related note, I remember several years back there was a bus stop advert that ran, which simply featured a search box with a search term in it (that I can't remember now). Upon searching said term, the first result was for some internet marketing company. I remember shortly afterwards, it seemed every advertiser was suddenly saying 'search for [insert company name or product]' or instead of directing people to a specific URL. That fad appears to have died off now.

That would be awful, replacing a long-standing open medium with a closed medium from a company that doesn't even know how to run itself.

That would be awful, replacing a long-standing open medium with a closed medium from a company that doesn't even know how to run itself.


On a related note, I remember several years back there was a bus stop advert that ran, which simply featured a search box with a search term in it (that I can't remember now). Upon searching said term, the first result was for some internet marketing company. I remember shortly afterwards, it seemed every advertiser was suddenly saying 'search for [insert company name or product]' or instead of directing people to a specific URL. That fad appears to have died off now.

Of course on radio there's this from Pete Tong back in 1995:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyRklSLMqTM

The earliest web plug of any kind I saw was on ITV's Bad Influence in 1994 (End credits 19:35 if the time doesn't work)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ85MDPUSEc

Just an email address there, but later in the series the Yorkshire TV website was plugged too (19:26)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xlva8bL56MQ

Though there are countless episodes of BBC Micro Live that go all the way back to the 1980s where they plugged the various email like services of the time, like British Telecom Gold.

The datablast was an experiment in sending viewers an obscene amount of information in about thirty seconds or so, as Bad Influence did for a series or maybe two, though how effective this was is up for debate and also depended on whether one had the patience or even a semi-decent recording/machine that allowed one to pause and read stills like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBs_ABt-hRc

There may have been other shows that did datablasts too, looking at the comments of Tom Scott's video.

On a related note, I remember several years back there was a bus stop advert that ran, which simply featured a search box with a search term in it (that I can't remember now). Upon searching said term, the first result was for some internet marketing company. I remember shortly afterwards, it seemed every advertiser was suddenly saying 'search for [insert company name or product]' or instead of directing people to a specific URL. That fad appears to have died off now.

I think hashtags are more prominent than Twitter handles though. This was a bit ropey for a while because they were pretty much exclusive to Twitter so you had BBC shows effectively promoting one platform over others. Since then however, hashtags are widely used on most social networks.

Was the http:// actually needed in the early days? And index.html for that matter?

the URL was fundamentally just an abbreviated way of refering [sic] to the combination of [stuff] which previously had to be understood contextually for each different communication system.

This system made it possible to refer to different systems from within Hypertext, but now that virtually all content is hosted over HTTP, may not be as necessary anymore. As early as 1996 browsers were already inserting the http:// and www. for users automatically