Happy 20th birthday to Neosurf
Travel back to 2004 to help Neosurf blow out their birthday candles!
We’re big believers in marking brand anniversaries (especially if there’s cake involved), and 2024 is a big year for Neosurf. As the curtain lifts on the Paris Olympics, exactly a century since the city last hosted the games, Neosurf (also founded and based in Paris), is celebrating 20 years at the forefront of the online pay and play industry.
The world has certainly changed a lot during those two decades. We’re going to take you back in time to the year 2004, and revisit a few more events from that year.
As Neosurf launched, elsewhere in the online world, big changes were afoot:
At Harvard University, ‘The Facebook’ was launched on 4 February, linking its students socially online for the first time. It eventually opened to all and changed its moniker to simply ‘Facebook’ in August 2005.
Apple's iTunes Music Store launched in the UK in June 2004, and sold more than 450,000 songs in the first week.
On April 1st (which caused a few raised eyebrows) Google launched Gmail.
And 2004 was a similarly big year for sport…
Athens hosted the Olympics, becoming only one of four cities at the time to have hosted the summer games more than once. They’re joined this year by Paris.
Greece had a bumper year for sport in 2004, unexpectedly winning the European football championships, hosted by Portugal.
…while over in the Premier League, The Arsenal ‘Invincibles’ won without a single defeat, winning 26 of their 38 games played and drawing 12.
In the world of entertainment, 2004 was all about pop and good friends…
The year’s most successful act was McFly whose first two debut singles entered at number one. They went on to have two more top five hits later in the year.
Britney Spears returned to the charts with her number one, Toxic. In January of the same year she married her childhood friend Jason Alexander, but the marriage was annulled a swift 55 hours later.
US sitcom ‘Friends’ aired its final episode on 6 May. Could we BE any more invested in a series finale?
… And Neosurf wasn’t the only one building big dreams…
The Gherkin (30 St Mary Axe), designed by Norman Foster opened in 2004, paving the way for the Shard, the Cheesegrater and the Walkie Talkie.
Norman Foster’s impressive Millau Viaduct in the Aveyron Occitane region of southern France opened to traffic.
Construction of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, began in 2004. It now sits at a height of 829.8m.
What are your memories of 2004? And please join us in wishing Neosurf another successful 20 years and more!
