2009-2014? That's not the old web. Or I'm old. Take your pick.

Yeah, I'd say "old web" is early '90s up through about mid-2000s or so. Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire, lots of standalone web forums, the early blogosphere, no social media, etc.

‘09-‘14 is hilariously not the “old web.” With that said, those of us who participated in what I consider the “old web” are likely “old” now, so… shrug?

Two of my favorite sites [0][1] still online—Lurkers Guide to Babylon 5 and ex-astris-scientia—were started in ‘92 and ‘98 respectively.

Elegant content for a more civilized age.

[0] http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/

[1] https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/

I've just gotten used to this at this point. My first time on the web was somewhere around 1995 I think, although my first time on the Internet was earlier (it was a proxy through some ancient BBS and I'm pretty sure it was using gopher). Even though I was just a kid back then, clearly that makes me old now.

I’m old and it’s definitely not the old web. I consider the old web to be when PNGs were sliced with Fireworks and laid out in tables.

2009-2014 is Web 2.0, back when people still thought social media was a good idea.

For me the old web is when people still had homepages. When those went away, the old web died.

Right? When I think of the old web I think of my Xena and X-Files fan sites on Geocities circa 1997

It was still a significantly different era than today. Let’s call it Middle Web. Maybe Late Middle Web.

+1 for this

I'd consider the facebook and mega era to be relatively new, the "old web" for me would be the one without centralization around a few giants, the era of random phpbb forums, private websites with "this site is under construction" banners and internet directories to find stuff.