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WebChat Broadcasting System
WebChat Broadcasting System, or WBS for short, was a virtual community created during the 1990s. Supported by online advertising, it was one of few services at the time to offer free integrated community services including chat rooms, message boards, and free personal web pages. Extremely popular during the mid to late 1990s in the era prior to the Dot-com bust, WBS was at that time the largest and best-known social media website on the internet. In 1998, WBS was acquired by the search engine Infoseek, which was in turn acquired by Disney/ABC. The original WebChat Broadcasting System closed on 15 September 1999 after its chat rooms were integrated into Disney's existing Go Network chat rooms. A revived version of WBS existed from 2009 to 2023.
WBS featured browser-based chat, real-time discussion, with moderated chat rooms in addition to user-created private chat rooms. Common to webchat, its chat rooms required no software download to use. It allowed users to upload their own images into chat sessions and had three chat modes: streaming, frames, and no frames. In addition to images users could add audio, video, and hotlinks to conversations. WBS also featured other services, such as email, and allowed users to create and maintain personal web pages. Membership was free.
WBS was founded as the Internet Roundtable Society in 1990 by Michael J. Fremont and Wendie Bernstein Lash in Menlo Park, California. It began as an "edutainment" company featuring such content as live Internet broadcasts of interviews with prominent individuals in science, technology and pop culture. As internet chatting gained popularity, the company began to focus on chat, whereupon the name was changed to the WebChat Broadcasting System in 1993.
IRC had existed as a dedicated chatting network but was mostly used by seasoned Internet users. Chat websites capitalized on the growing base of Internet general users by providing a simpler, more attractive chatting interface. Chatting became focused on community and socialization.
By August 1996, WBS had 500,000 registered users and was growing by over 3,000 users per day.
In February 1997, WBS reached a milestone of 1 million registered users, accruing 4,000 new registered users and 5.5 million page views every day. Registrations were not confirmed. At this point, it was featuring 200 individual affinity groups. Within a week of the launch of a new feature to allow members to create their own home pages, over 15,000 members had begun using it.
By May 1997, WBS had grown to 1.4 million registered users. The other large web chat community at this time was WebGenesis Inc.'s The Globe. Also internet service provider AOL had over 14,000 chat rooms available to their customers through their non-web interface.
In June 1997, WBS hit 1.5 million registered users and had 7 million daily page views with over 200 rooms.
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WebChat Broadcasting System AI simulator
(@WebChat Broadcasting System_simulator)
WebChat Broadcasting System
WebChat Broadcasting System, or WBS for short, was a virtual community created during the 1990s. Supported by online advertising, it was one of few services at the time to offer free integrated community services including chat rooms, message boards, and free personal web pages. Extremely popular during the mid to late 1990s in the era prior to the Dot-com bust, WBS was at that time the largest and best-known social media website on the internet. In 1998, WBS was acquired by the search engine Infoseek, which was in turn acquired by Disney/ABC. The original WebChat Broadcasting System closed on 15 September 1999 after its chat rooms were integrated into Disney's existing Go Network chat rooms. A revived version of WBS existed from 2009 to 2023.
WBS featured browser-based chat, real-time discussion, with moderated chat rooms in addition to user-created private chat rooms. Common to webchat, its chat rooms required no software download to use. It allowed users to upload their own images into chat sessions and had three chat modes: streaming, frames, and no frames. In addition to images users could add audio, video, and hotlinks to conversations. WBS also featured other services, such as email, and allowed users to create and maintain personal web pages. Membership was free.
WBS was founded as the Internet Roundtable Society in 1990 by Michael J. Fremont and Wendie Bernstein Lash in Menlo Park, California. It began as an "edutainment" company featuring such content as live Internet broadcasts of interviews with prominent individuals in science, technology and pop culture. As internet chatting gained popularity, the company began to focus on chat, whereupon the name was changed to the WebChat Broadcasting System in 1993.
IRC had existed as a dedicated chatting network but was mostly used by seasoned Internet users. Chat websites capitalized on the growing base of Internet general users by providing a simpler, more attractive chatting interface. Chatting became focused on community and socialization.
By August 1996, WBS had 500,000 registered users and was growing by over 3,000 users per day.
In February 1997, WBS reached a milestone of 1 million registered users, accruing 4,000 new registered users and 5.5 million page views every day. Registrations were not confirmed. At this point, it was featuring 200 individual affinity groups. Within a week of the launch of a new feature to allow members to create their own home pages, over 15,000 members had begun using it.
By May 1997, WBS had grown to 1.4 million registered users. The other large web chat community at this time was WebGenesis Inc.'s The Globe. Also internet service provider AOL had over 14,000 chat rooms available to their customers through their non-web interface.
In June 1997, WBS hit 1.5 million registered users and had 7 million daily page views with over 200 rooms.