Wkw,
Although their was a time when RS and Tip.it were tiny I guess, You would have had to start very early on to have had that. I started around the end of August or early September 2001 and there were already thousands of people playing. As far as Tip.it and the forums go, Scapeboard had close to a quarter million accounts in 2004 before we migrated here. Granted, many of those were duplicate accounts with a smattering of bots thrown in, but even after we cleaned house, we still had a good 80 or 90, 000 accounts.
Here's a look at Jagex.com from December 2001. Before the update Andrew describes in the news, when I sold 1k iron or silver, it was done one screen (28) at a time. With server crashes or problems with internet connections, it could take quite a while for big trades. Times sure have changed.
Images take from: http://web.archive.org/web/20011214022429/www.jagex.com/runescape.html