I had a conversation with a friend the other day regarding social networks and brought up that I might have actually participated in one of the very first ones. From 1991 to 1997 there was a bulletin board service called SFNET. There were 25 or so terminals set up in coffee shops across San Francisco and by pumping quarters into them at regular intervals you could could interact with people in a bright green field of text on black background. Additionally, many of us with home computers paid a few bucks for the same privilege.
SFNET had lots of regular participants, many of whom were my friends in real life. People I had met through perfroming improv and standup. But it was also a way of meeting new people and SF Net went beyond the green glow of the monitor and held regular NetGets where we would meet each other fact to face.
There was an exchange of ideas, some rudimentary game playing and lots of arguing. As a phenomenon it grew and many people from Europe started calling the exclusively San Francisco phone numbers to participate. Some friends of mine developed some strong friendships with many European Netters and would often host 1 or 2 of them at their home. They also traveled across Europe on vacation and stayed, I believe, exclusively at the homes of people they had met online.
I was on SFNET pretty close to its opening, perhaps the end of 1991 and for several years. I don’t remember it closing its doors or any goodbyes, I suppose by 1995 or so I had moved on, got busy with other things. I wish I could remember my screen name. I went online to see what I could find on SFNET and there’s a web page from the founder, Wayne at http://www.sfnet.org/
There’s also an SFNET group on Facebook. I just joined it today and read some of the posts and the screen names came back to me, Scrappy, Joe Cuppa, and others. It was interesting to see how people had “grown up” and what they were up to today.
So my question is, when I put together my resume and list Social Networking Experience, can I say 18 years?
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