Top 10 Things from the 2000s That Don't Exist Anymore

Before the iPhone, there was the Nintendo PictoChat. This 2004 messaging app was included on various Nintendo DS consoles. Essentially, one user could type or draw on their console and share their message to other DS users. Those who played “Super Smash Bros. Brawl” may recognize the PictoChat, as it actually appears as a stage in the game. The app is technically still active, but let’s be honest, does anyone actually use it anymore? The DS was discontinued in 2013, and the 3DS has since replaced PictoChat with another app titled Swapnote.

This social networking service technically started back in 1999 when a programmer named Brad Fitzpatrick created it to stay in touch with his friends. The basics: people write a personal journal and other users can read it. It was eventually adopted by various fandoms and used for things like fan fiction and original stories, but even this was eventually taken elsewhere. Nowadays, the service is mainly used in Russia. Yep, the product was eventually sold to Russian company, SUP Media, where it became a popular site for political pundits and public figures. So, like the Twitter of Russia?

Shockingly enough, some people have never seen a pager outside of a movie. Pagers were essentially used to transmit voice and text messages before the invention of cell phones. These things have been used since the ‘50s, although they lasted well into the 2000s. In 2003 alone, the pager industry generated over $6 billion in revenue. Unfortunately, this all came crashing down upon the widespread adoption of cell phones and, you know, texting. Nowadays, pagers are mainly used in public health and emergency industries. This is due to their systems being more reliable than cell networks.

The Zune was essentially Microsoft’s answer to the iPod. It was a line of portable media devices that could play music and videos through the “Zune Music Pass” service. The first model, the Zune 30, came equipped with a whopping 30 gigs of storage and a three-inch screen. It was introduced in 2006, but sales were immediately stagnant. It took just 3% of the MP3 market, and was considered “dead” by 2008. Sales had crashed, and even major stores like GameStop refused to sell them citing a lack of demand. The hardware hung on until 2011, until it was mercifully discontinued.

CD players were introduced in 1982 and quickly eclipsed records as the primary method of listening to music. Their popularity lasted well into the 2000s. That is before things like the iPod and smartphones essentially made them obsolete. But, before then, we needed something to hold our hundreds of CDs. The answer: CD binders. These were large books filled with plastic pages, and in these pages were slots in which to slide a CD. Unfortunately, the fun of flipping through these “booklets” went out with CD players themselves. Now we scroll through our phones, instead! Admittedly, it doesn’t bring the same joy.

Remember the Sony Ericsson? Not many do. The mobile market is a fickle thing, and many companies - (xref) including BlackBerry - have come and gone. Smartphones were actually in play long before the iPhone appeared in 2007. In fact, five years earlier, Sony released a touch-based smartphone called the Sony Ericsson P800. This ran under the Symbian OS, which was developed in the late ‘90s for PDAs. The final Ericsson phone was the Vivaz, which was introduced in March 2010. After that, the Ericsson brand was discontinued. Sony dropped their previous OS and began running Android, and they abandoned the Ericsson line to focus exclusively on the Xperia.

Few video games are as historic as “Halo 2.” Its multiplayer component helped popularize Xbox Live and originated many now-common aspects of online gaming, including matchmaking and lobbies. Yep, one could certainly make the argument that online multiplayer gaming began with “Halo 2” - at least within the mainstream. Unfortunately, a major part of its history is now dead. The Xbox Live server was officially discontinued in April of 2010, and the PC servers were terminated three years later. By the summer of 2013, all the OG “Halo 2” servers were offline. Luckily, the game survives through “The Master Chief Collection,” and its multiplayer can still be enjoyed to this day.

There was simply nothing like getting home from school, grabbing a snack, and logging into MSN for the night. This was a basic service that allowed two or more people to talk to each other through text-based messaging. Voice recordings were introduced in later iterations. The service really took off in the early 2000s, with version 7.5 being released in the summer of 2005. Following that, MSN was rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, and this was officially released in June of 2006. Unfortunately, it was also around this time that social media truly blew up, leaving Messenger in the dust.

Following the advent of the internet, it didn’t take long for file sharing clients to pop up. The most popular, by far, were LimeWire and Napster. These took advantage of something called peer-to-peer file sharing. It essentially allowed people to download music from someone else’s files without paying for it. Isn’t that stealing? We’ll let you be the judge. These systems exploded in the early 2000s and were easy enough to use. So much so, that even the most technologically-averse individuals could operate them. Of course, along with their popularity came the copyright lawsuits. As a result, Napster was forced to shut down in 2001.

Anyone who used the internet in the early 2000s knows the sound of dial-up. Dial-up allowed us to access the early internet, which was more of a “Wild West” experience than the corporatized internet of today. The speeds were cumbersome, and the video and audio quality was not for the faint of heart. But, there was an undeniable sense of fun to it all. We were experiencing something groundbreaking, historic even. Of course, broadband killed dial-up in the mid 2000s, and a certain part of the internet ended with it. One thing we don’t miss however, is having to log off so someone could use the phone. Yeesh!