25 Pictures Of The Lesbian Internet, 1997-2007

hey clarissa, let’s meet up later on technodyke.com

The internet changed everything for a lot of marginalized, disconnected groups of human beings, especially the gay ones. Lesbians took to the web in droves and with great passion and enthusiasm, some establishing their own dykey webnooks but mostly creating pages and pages of links to various dykey webnooks. (Remember when Google didn’t exist yet and the only way to find what you were looking for was to wade through the corresponding Yahoo! Directory?) PlanetOut.com was the primary destination for internet LGBTQs for the first few years, even obtaining millions upon millions in financing which we’re not even remotely jealous of. Now, PlanetOut has been absorbed into Here! Media, which also owns Gay.com, SheWired, OUT and The Advocate.

The other day Laneia and I were playing lesbian website portal bingo on Wayback Machine for funsies and I thought we’d share some of these throwbacks with you. For the record, some of these sites still exist — AfterEllen, obviously, but also Lesbian.com is now under new ownership (very lovely new ownership, if we do say so ourselves), GO Magazine and Curve.

25 Pictures of The Lesbian Internet, 1997-2007

Planet Out – Feb 22nd, 1997

Girlfriends Magazine – Jan 10, 1998

Bad Attitude – Feb 10, 1998

Lesbian.com – December 12th, 1998

Anything That Moves – November 24, 1998

LesbiaNation – December 12, 1998

Women Loving Women Webring- Jan 17, 1999

The Girlie TV Network – April 16, 1999

Lady Lovers – April 28, 1999

Butch-Femme.com – May 5, 1999

[visit butch-femme dot com]

Planet Out’s Dykesville – October 4th, 1999

Gay.com – October 10, 1999

Girlfriends Magazine – October 13, 1999

Lesbian.com – November 3, 1999

Dyke Diva – November 28 1999

Dyke’s World – November 16, 1999

Dyke Test – January 23, 2000

click to enlarge

DykeDiva.com – August 17, 2000

Wishing Well – August 19, 2000

F2F Dungeon – October 14, 2000

Dyxploitation – June 5, 2000

Shoe.com – November 19, 2001

AfterEllen – June 1, 2002

AfterEllen – October 12, 2002

Lesbian.com – March 22, 2004

PlanetOut Women- September 19, 2004

Afterellen.com – December 10, 2004

GO! Magazine – July 14, 2007

OurChart- July 30, 2007

and then this happened…

Autostraddle.com – March 16, 2009

And here we are today.