HAITI - 10 Years Of Internet History

It's true, go to Google and do a search on keyword "Haiti" and you will come up with 131,000,000 search results.

WOW... can you believe this?

131 million search results for "Haiti", and we're not even counting the people who are search for Smoye Noisy, Djakout Mizik, Gazmann Couleur, and all the other famous Haitians and Haiti related topic out there.

So...

Can you imagine how much information is available on the internet about Haiti?

Well... I can't... But one thing is for sure...

A huge chunk of that information is sitting on the largest Haiti Online Network on the Planet

Yep...

If it's about Haiti, It's on Fouye...

Back in August 12, 2000, when I decided to build www.Fouye.com, the first Haitian search engine, Yahoo had very little information about Haiti, except for the obvious "poorest country" type information, and Google was still "GOO WHAT?"

Back in those days, the few Haitians who were experimenting with personal homepages had a long list of "LINKS" to all the Haitian web pages they knew about and you, the web surfer, had to go through these lists to find out what's new on the Haitian Internet.

Others had these things called web rings... Do you remember those?

I remember scanning through the hyperlinks list of the few Haitian web pages I knew back then, and all the links in those web rings, trying to gather as much information about Haiti as I possibly could... Just enough to fill up my "first Haitian search engine" before I could even launch it.

When Fouye was finally launched, there was probably about 300 to 500 links in it.

10 years ago, that was "A LOT" of information about Haiti online, so much information that a search engine had to be built just to house it.

WOW....

There were so few Haitian web sites back then, everything was a "cyber mall", and all the rest were home pages provided by your internet service provider.

I remember in 1995, when I built my first very first web page called "Woody's Playground" in Spring Valley, NY, the URL was http:/ /j51.com/ datamax

That little thing before 'datamax' is called a 'tilde' and every homepage had one... You forget that 'tilde' boy...

Back in those days, the hottest Haitian music website on the internet was KOL (Konpa Online)

AND...

I used to beg these Haitian webmasters back then to link to me... link to me... Please add my link to your site...

Wow... We've come a long way...

And the skeptics are still saying Haiti pap janm avanse... This story I am telling you is only 10 years old... And it's only my side of the story...

That's progress if you ask me...

10 years ago I used to be so upset about the quality of information available on the internet about Haiti, it was mostly statistics and a reminder of how poor we are.

I learned something from all of this...

"If you want the world to know the good side of you, then you have to broadcast it yourself..."

And Broadcast it we did...

Thanks God for all the young webmasters of that time who, like me, had a vision to give Haiti a new look online.

And we did...

We became the new Haitian social army... marching on... word by word... line by line... link by link... trying to offset the "poor country" crap everyone was saying about us and our country online.

Page by page, we saturated the Internet with new information about Haitian culture, pictures of Haitians having fun at the Kanaval, and on the beaches of Haiti, opening discussion forums, and discussing topics that mattered to us, the Haitian people.

One by one, the Haitian Internet surfers joined in...

Nowadays, if you are searching for the latest CD release by Alan Cave, you don't have to add "Haiti" at the end of your search.... Just type "Alan Cave New CD" on your search bar and you will certainly find it.

Anyone who has ever searched for Haitian content online 10 years ago will understand exactly what I mean by adding "Haiti" at the end.

And if you want his biography, you simply Google "Alan Cave Biography" and... One click... you're there.

It's 10 years later, Google is now a verb, and Google makes it so easy to find what you are looking for on the Internet that "The little Haitian search engine that could" is probably not your number one spot online...

If you Google the keyword "Haiti" you will come up with 131,000,000 search results.

Incredible!

I am so glad I had something to do with it.

In the last 12 months alone, 10 years later, one of my websites, www.Belfim.com received a total of 59,504,111 Hits...

www.Belfim.com alone served 52,024,551 files in the last 12 months alone, totaling 623,238,396 KBytes to a whopping 1,408,336 web site visitors.

You think that's a lot?

Then consider the fact that Fouye Haiti, the Haitian side of our network, is serving Haitian web content on 30 to 50 Haitian websites online.

The Fouye family own the hottest Haitian chat room online, the largest Haiti movie database online, the largest music database online, the best Haitian Business Directory online, the most popular Haitian political blogs online, the largest Haitian events database online, and the most interactive Haitian photo albums available online, just to name a few.

I will not be surprised if our file delivery count is in the "billions" per year.

Like McDonalds... Billions served...

You know how long I've been waiting to say that? :)

What a feeling...

Now 10 years later, there is a new Haitian revolution on the Internet...

I call it the Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube generation, an army of young Haitians around the world, armed with a cell phone and access to the internet, they are swamping the social networks with Haitian content.

We all know what an impact they made during the Haiti earthquake disaster.

Major networks like CNN and MSNBC were relying on these young Haitian soldiers to report INSTANT Haiti news to the world. Information was flowing out of Haiti before these networks could even get one news reporter on the ground.

My friend, do not listen to the nay sayers who keep on telling you that "Haiti pap chanje"

Haiti change deja...

What you just read is 10 years of change in Haiti's Internet History.

Article by: Woodring Saint Preux

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