In the previous article, we talked about the early days of the private proxies technology, a simpler technology used literally to only hide one’s IP or location. We also talked about the proxy format and why, even today, the IPv4 format is widely employed by most proxy providers. Now, we are going to continue and show how proxies and their use evolved during the subsequent phases of the Internet. Thus, we are going to continue with web 2.0 and the development of special use proxies that lead to the development of today's private proxy market.

 

 

Private proxies and the web 2.0 development

 

Starting with the mid-2000s, the Internet has evolved into what is called today web 2.0. A broader Internet, where the content and web page interaction is not created by servers only, but by the actual users. Thus, in this era, we start to see the inception of social media and other websites that allow users to create content and distribute it among themselves.

 

In this period, Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter are created. Moreover, forums and content publishing systems start to develop. And the user is not anymore a simple consumer of a data feed provided by websites. Now, users can start creating their own content. Moreover, now they are also able to interact with one another and share the freshly created content.

 

 

A marketer’s perspective

 

In the same period with user empowerment, marketers started to notice trends of users interactions, where the authority is transferred from a central knowledge center to a distributed network composed of other users, similar to the initial user.

 

And some marketers spot the opportunity of creating and managing web 2.0 accounts to create and distribute the authority they need for their products to gain credibility in the market.

 

One such marketer or entrepreneur spotting this trend early on is Sophia Amoruso, the person behind Nasty Gal. In her biography, she mentioned using several MySpace accounts to comment and share her clothing items.

 

 

Why proxies started to be used by marketers

 

The main reason for which private proxies where adopted by marketers is that web 2.0 platforms, together with the empowerment of their users, limited the number of accounts one can create and manage from a single IP.

 

Thus, any marketer looking to manage multiple accounts needed a way to distribute the connection between these accounts to the network’s servers. And the only way to do it was by using private proxies. In this way, marketers could connect their accounts through several proxies. Therefore, avoiding any potential bans or limitations imposed by certain networks.

 

 

Private proxies and the adoption of web scraping

 

Another area in which proxies started to be adopted was research and web scraping of certain domains. Proxies are needed in this area because scraping involves performing a large number of requests, in a short period of time. And most servers limit the number of requests coming from a single IP.

 

The only viable option left for researchers and webmasters employing web scrapers was to start developing tools that can perform multiple queries and distribute them through several IPs. In this way, they started implementing proxies in their tools’ setup.

 

 

Special use proxies – their development

 

As more marketers and researching started using private proxies during the web 2.0 period, networks, websites and search engines started banning abusive behaviors and the IPs from where this behavior originated. These bans where enforced because marketers and webmasters lack the skill and knowledge in using their proxies wisely. This lead to many proxies being flagged.

 

However, proxy providers, to continue offering a great service and working proxies, started selling special use proxies. These are private proxies specifically allocated for a certain service. Moreover, most of these proxies are virgin proxies. This means they have never been used before. In this way, a proxy provider offers high quality, high anonymity proxies. And at the same time, a proxy user received working proxies for their project.

 

Special use proxies lead to today’s vast offering. One will notice that providers are offering Social media proxies, Sneakers proxies or Classified ads proxies.

 

Each proxy category is virgin and allocated to work safely and securely with the domain from which it draws its name. In other words, Instagram proxies will allow anybody to connect safely Instagram accounts through them.

 

 

Private proxies today and tomorrow

 

Since the fragmentation of private proxy offering, a user has now the certainty that he will get working proxies for his project. This trend is likely to continue as the proxy market matures and high-quality proxy providers become established players and authorities in the market.

 

In the future, even if IPv6 technology will be adopted, private proxy providers will continue to diversify and offer a more specialized service. Moreover, with the creation and development of other online platforms, newer categories of private proxies will be created.



 Thursday, October 26, 2017



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