Compuserve Gone?

Can it be? Is CompuServe actually gone?

The original CompuServe service, first offered in 1979, was shut down this past week by its current owner, AOL. The service, which provided its users with addresses such as 73402,3633 and was the first major online service, had seen the number of users dwindle in recent years. At its height, the service boasted about having over half a million users simultaneously on line. Many innovations we now take for granted, from online travel (Eaasy Sabre), online shopping, online stock quotations, and global weather forecasts, just to name a few, were standard fare on CompuServe in the 1980s.

This was the first almost-internet; though really, it was just one huge bulletin board. You had to pay extra to do things like buy a plane ticket, but buying a plane ticket was much slower than calling the airline. In fact, it was slower than calling the airline and booking in a foreign language, with a drunk ticket agent, who refused to answer the phone.

About the only thing you might want to do on CompuServe was chat with someone across the country. But there was real novelty in that, at the time. Nobody would want that old system today, but it was one of the first steps down the path that brought us the ability to watch performing goats and mimes in almost any city, keyboard cats, lip syncing kids, and Obama photoshops. Keyboard cat, play CompuServe on outa here.