Online downloadable audio was barely tractable in 1999 or earlier, let alone streaming video. What was this golden age, what were the sites, and what was the usage?
Streaming video is almost wholly 2004 and later, generally years later.
Text. With pictures. You know, like books. Which you can actually use while, say, fixing something, unlike a video which you need to pause, rewind, watch again, while balancing pieces of a torn down laptop on your hands.
Text with pictures suffer horribly from link rot when the pictures aren't on the same site (for example forum threads), with all the image hosting services that had closed in the last decade (or even dropbox stopping to serve as image host, even for paying clients)
You are absolutely correct about the timeline! My experiences with independent video sites were mostley between 2000 and 2007 I'd guess. I do not think this contradicts any of my other statements, though.
Looking back further before video, we had web-rings which allowed for finding some of the best and worst sites on a subject :) I can't be the only card carrying member of the HTML Writers Guild here, can I?
Online downloadable audio was barely tractable in 1999 or earlier, let alone streaming video. What was this golden age, what were the sites, and what was the usage?
Streaming video is almost wholly 2004 and later, generally years later.