CompuServe

CompuServe's corporate roots trace to Compu-Serv Network, Inc., founded in 1969 in Columbus, Ohio as a computer time-sharing company. The consumer service launched September 24, 1979 as MicroNET, sold through Radio Shack, then was renamed CompuServe Information Service (CIS) on July 1, 1980. Users logged in with seven-digit octal IDs in the format 7xxxx,xx — a legacy of its PDP-10 mainframe architecture — instead of the screen names AOL would later popularize. From 1989, those IDs could receive internet email if you swapped the comma for a period.

CompuServe's culture was earnest and moderated: its thousands of forums were the web's community precursors, and its CB Simulator (launched 1980) pioneered commercial multi-user chat. In 1987, CompuServe engineers invented the GIF — the image format that would become the internet's lingua franca of reaction images. By April 1995 it claimed roughly 3 million subscribers worldwide, the largest online service at the time.

Then AOL's aggressive flat-rate pricing and mainstream carpet-bombing marketing obliterated the advantage. AOL blew past 10 million subscribers — on its way to more than 20 million by 2000 — while CompuServe stalled on hourly billing. In February 1998 the endgame arrived: WorldCom bought CompuServe for $1.2 billion in stock, kept the network business for itself, and handed the consumer Information Service to AOL — the rival CompuServe had once towered over. AOL kept "CompuServe Classic" running for the faithful until June 30, 2009, closing out a 30-year run.