In 1986, five years before the birth of the World Wide Web in 1991, I was an online Editor for Boston CitiNet,
the largest Videotex service (also known as a Bulletin Board Service or BBS) on the East Coast. In these early days of telecommunications we were the Beta Testers for Packet Switching and many of us would become Beta Testers for America Online.
Boston CitiNet Folder
We also were the world-wide pioneers of online advertising and my opening line was, "Do you know what a modem is?" I'll never forget the quote from a newspaper reporter who said sarcasticlly, "Do you think we'll see online advertising on Taxicabs?" I still chuckle when I see a website on a cab.
Compuserve,
Prodigy,
Delphi,
and GEnie
were available at the staggering costs of ten cents a minute and up to $18 an hour. What the media and the investment world did not know at the time was the incredible amount of time that people were capable of logging. I remember a story of a man who was spending over $300 a month in connect fees. When AOL started charging $19.99 a month, the world of online communications would be changed forever.
On CitiNet, WERS from Emerson College was the first educational radio station to go online and WZLX 100.7 radio was THE first commercial radio station in Boston to go online. There were no audio or video capabilities available at this time and all that they could post were ASCI text messages.
WZLX 100.7 Letter
At 1200 baud we had to "put-up" with the 300 baud users who were painfully slow. When the blazing speed 2400 baud modems became available at The Apple Store in Fresh Pond, Cambridge, I was one of the first to purchase one at $499.95 and it was a bargain.
CitiNet was involved in a trial with Nynex called InfoPath and Digital Equipment Corporation supplied the Microvax-II computers. The entire program was written in Basic and as Sysops (System Operators), writers, Editors and Information Providers, as we were called, not only did we have to write all of our own material, we had to create the different types of pages, such as Forums (Blogs), and Input Screens, (Contact Us). There were no pictures available on CitiNet at this time but another service called Argus was experimenting with Tifs and Gifs.
CitiNet went public around 1981 hooking up to the NYNEX phone network and allowing New York users to browse the dozens of sections available at the cost of 10 cents a minute. I was running five sections at the time and I received one of the highest checks at 32 cents. I cashed it.
InfoPath would later be used to run the Minuteman Library system and CitiNet closed it's doors but it had been an incredibly exciting time for the dozens of CitiNet editors. One of my sections was "The VCR Hotline," and I was one of the first members of the Press to broadcast live news updates from the Consumer Electronics Shows and Comdex shows in Las Vegas in 1987 and 1988.
