The public witnessed the birth of email in the 1960s (Borders, 2010).

The internet, on the other

hand, did not become widely available until 1991. Email began as a way to send communications
from one computer to another, but both computers had to be connected to the internet. Today,
email servers accept and retain messages, allowing recipients to retrieve them whenever they
want. ARPANET was built by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), a US
government agency, in 1969. ARPANET was a "early network of time-sharing computers that
served as the internet's foundation." CompuServe, the third invention of the 1960s, was founded
in 1969 with the goal of providing time-sharing services through the rental of computer time.
This service was prohibitively expensive for many people due to its exorbitant costs (Rimskii,
2011; Ritholz, 2010).
Computer Innovations
During the 1970s, social media was progressively developed. MUD was a real-time virtual
environment including role-playing games, interactive fiction, and online conversation that was
originally known as Multi-User Dungeon, Multi-User Dimension, or Multi-User Domain. The
majority of MUDs are text-based, requiring users to type commands in natural language. BBS
was founded in the same year as MUD, in 1978. Bulletin board system is abbreviated as BBS.
Users log in to upload and download software, read news, and communicate with other users.
Bulletin boards were initially accessible by one person at a time via a modem connected to a
telephone line. Bulletin boards did not have color or images at first. Bulletin boards were the
forerunners of the Internet. The Usenet, which was founded in 1980 after being conceived in
1979, is akin to a BBS. Usenet is a system for sharing articles and breaking news. Unlike a BBS,
Usenet does not have a dedicated administrator or central server—messages are delivered to
numerous sites via news feeds (Ritholz, 2010). As a lecturer at Murray State University in
Murray, Kentucky, I began a project to collaborate with a BBS to fulfill the requirements of area
educators (Shirky, 2011).

The WELL, GEnie, Listserv, and IRC were all introduced in the 1980s. The WELL stands for
the Whole Earth "Lectronic Link," which originated as a BBS. It is one of the oldest
continuously operational virtual communities, having been created in Sausalito, California by
Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant. General Electric Network for Information Exchange is
abbreviated as GEnie. It was an online service that used the ASCII language and competed with
CompuServe. GEnie was run on time-sharing mainframe computers by General Electric
Information Services (GEIS) during non-peak hours. GEIS initially refused to enable GEnie to
expand its network. The first electronic mailing list software application, Listserv, was released
in 1986. Email lists had to be manually managed prior to its formation. The software enables the
sender to send a single email to multiple recipients. Listserv was originally freeware, but it is
now available for purchase. There is a free version available for up to five lists with 500
subscribers. IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, is a group messaging system. Real-time chat, often
known as internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing, is a type of real-time chat.
Although IRC is mostly used for group communication, it also allows for private messages,
conversation, and data transfers between two users (Ritholz, 2010).
Networking over the Internet

In the 1990s, a slew of social networking sites popped up. Six Degrees, BlackPlanet, Asian
Avenue, and MoveOn are just a few examples. These are or were online niche social sites where
users might engage, such as public policy advocacy sites and a social network based on the web
of contacts approach. Blogging services such as Blogger and Epinions were also developed.
Epinions is a website where customers may read or write product reviews. ThirdVoice and
Napster were two software products that were popular in the 1990s but have since been
discontinued. ThirdVoice was a free plug-in that let people leave comments on websites. The
software's critics claimed that remarks were frequently rude or defamatory. Napster was a file-
sharing program that allowed users to share files with one other. Users were permitted to
distribute music files without using traditional distribution methods, which was later determined
to be a copyright violation (Ritholz, 2010).