Was a lot of it classic word of mouth, email, etc.?
I imagine something like that, but I’m wondering as I feel like there may be some useful pieces of knowledge that may be worth recalling as people gradually start to move back out of the more centralized sites/services.
Word of mouth, networking, magazines, and books were big, as I recall.
Oh yeah, magazines and traditional ads like billboards with URLs on them. “www” was in everything, some even with the protocol.
Remember all those CDs tucked into magazines?