IT'S the 10th anniversary of the Netscape browser, which created a mass market for the internet. Unless I mean the world wide web; the distinction is apparently important but eludes this e-dolt. Whichever it is, a decade on the primary purpose of online communication is now clear - gossip and grievance.

Ten years ago, the internet, not to mention the www, was gestating in the primordial cyber swamps. We all marvelled as photos of people's pets appeared on computer screens from the other side of the world in just days.

Visionaries looked at the photos of 101 dogs from Dalmatia and recognised the interweb's potential. Some saw the way it could create tolerance and understanding by encouraging communication between people of goodwill everywhere. But the real visionaries recognised what life online was really about - the chance of a quick quid.

Many moved to provide what people would pay plenty for - pornography. But more mainstream merchants saw the wideworld as an infinite electronic mall. And so in the first years of life online fortunes were made and lost, generally lost, by people selling everything imaginable from dalmatians to dildos.

Not that there was anything wrong with the idea, the e-entrepreneurs only added too many noughts to their profit projections. And now, 10 years on, the iww has taken a settled shape. For some, it is an electronic bazaar. Other people use it to pay the bills and chat on line with that nice Frau Deville from Dalamatia.

But because the interwet is now part of our lives, we use it for the four things that make the world go round - boasting, bitching, retribution and revenge.

For boasting, it is hard to beat the fate of Claire Swire at the hands of her bozo of a bloke. Swire, a young lady of London, pioneered e-idiocy in 2000 by emailing her views on oral sex to her lawyer boyfriend. Who, enjoying being presented as an upright sort of chap, promptly mailed the message to his mates, just a couple, mind. Who mailed theirs, and so on and so on.

Within hours the whole world was watching their screens for advice on any of Swire's other hobbies. There may be people who did not read Claire's comments, just not on this planet.

For bitching, people prefer to use the winterwent when they could do it in person, perhaps because electronic abuse reduces the risk of being thumped. Like the two Sydney legal secretaries in July who started with slander over a sandwich and ended with duelling keyboards.

They were both sacked over the blue, presumably for not billing abuse time to a client. That the sort of online gossip lawyers love is driven by sex in London, but sandwiches in Sydney, says a great deal about the two towns, but you would need to search the iweb to work out what.

When it comes to malice, it is hard to ignore the fate of the Korean commuter who did not clean up when her dog defecated on a train. That it was the failure to scoop the poop, rather than the presence of a pooping pup that upset other passengers probably says more about public transport in South Korea than the tourism authorities would like us to know. The dog lover's inertia landed her deep in the doo-doo. Passengers took photos of her with their phones and posted them to a web site, www.commutercrap.net.kr (all right, I made the address up). Information on her poured in and before long she was better known than Claire Swire, but less in demand for dates.

For revenge, there's www.don'tdatehimgirl, an American site where aggrieved women can post photos and details of cheating men. This is cyberjustice at its best. No excuses or explanation, annoy a lady and up goes the portrait, supported by details of misdeeds. The people who invented email and the wenterint will be proud.

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