AOL is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc.
AIM was an instant messaging and presence computer program created by AOL, which used the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time.
ICQ New is a cross-platform instant messaging (IM) and VoIP client. The name ICQ derives from the English phrase "I Seek You". Originally developed by the Israeli company Mirabilis in 1996, the client was bought by AOL in 1998, and then by Mail.Ru Group in 2010.
CompuServe was an American online service, the first major commercial one in the world. It opened in 1969 as a timesharing and remote access service marketed to corporations. After a successful 1979 venture selling otherwise under-utilized after-hours time to Radio Shack customers, the system was opened to the public, roughly the same time as The Source. H&R Block bought the company in 1980 and began to more aggressively advertise the service.
Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol is an open communication protocol designed for instant messaging (IM), presence information, and contact list maintenance. Based on XML, it enables the near-real-time exchange of structured data between two or more network entities. Designed to be extensible, the protocol offers a multitude of applications beyond traditional IM in the broader realm of message-oriented middleware, including signalling for VoIP, video, file transfer, gaming and other uses.
eWorld was an online service operated by Apple Inc. between June 1994 and March 1996. The services included email, news, software installs and a bulletin board system. Users of eWorld were often referred to as "ePeople."
Excite is an American website operated by IAC that provides outsourced internet content such as a metasearch engine, with outsourced weather and news content on the main page. As of 2024, all of Excite's operations are controlled by services outside of the business.
PowWow was the first Internet instant message and chat program for Windows. It was made by a company called Tribal Voice, Inc.
Xfire was a proprietary freeware instant messaging service for gamers that also served as a game server browser with various other features. It was available for Microsoft Windows.
Match is an online dating service with headquarters are in Dallas, Texas. The company has offices in Dallas, West Hollywood, San Francisco, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, and Beijing. Match is owned by Match Group, which owns several online dating services.
United Online, Inc. was an independent public company formed by the 2001 merger of NetZero and Juno Online Services. It is currently a subsidiary of investment bank B. Riley Financial. The company's range of products and services has evolved significantly since its inception as a provider of dial-up Internet access. This has been aided by a series of acquisitions that have included Classmates Online (2004), MyPoints (2006), and FTD Group, Inc. (2008), the latter of which was spun off as its own company in 2013. United Online is headquartered in Woodland Hills, California, United States.
StarMedia is a Latin American Internet brand, co-founded in August 1996 by Fernando Espuelas and Jack Chen as the first pan-regional Internet portal for Spanish and Portuguese speaking audiences. During the dot.com boom of the 1990s, StarMedia raised the first dollar of venture capital for a Latin Internet company which followed with the first IPO in its sector, while becoming one of the top 10 biggest websites on the Internet, measured by audience which is the site not written in English.
MSN Games is a casual gaming web site, with single player, multiplayer, PC download, and social casino video games. Games are available in free online, trial, and full feature pay-to-play versions.
Barry Martin Schuler is an American Internet entrepreneur and former chairman and CEO of America Online Inc. He is best known for leading the AOL team that simplified the online service provider's user interface, making it possible for millions of consumers to gain easy access to the Internet.
A web chat is a text-based system that allows users to communicate in real-time using easily accessible web interfaces. It is a type of Internet online chat distinguished by its simplicity and accessibility to users who do not wish to take the time to install and learn to use specialized chat software. This trait allows users instantaneous access and only a web browser is required to chat. Users will always get the latest version of a chat service because no software installation or update are required.
Michael Jones is an American entrepreneur, investor and CEO of Science Inc. In 2017, Jones was named one of Los Angeles's 500 most influential people by the Los Angeles Business Journal.
Broadband Sports was originally founded in 1998, later becoming a high-flying dotcom-era network of sports-content Web sites that raised over $60 million before shutting down in February 2001.
Bebo was an American social networking website that originally operated from 2005 until its bankruptcy in 2013 and relaunched in February 2021. The site relaunched several times after its bankruptcy with a number of short-lived offerings, including instant messaging and video streaming, until its acquisition by Amazon in July 2019 when it was shut down. It was announced in January 2021 that it would be returning as a new social media site the month after. By May 2022, it had once again been shut down, without having ever left beta testing.
WebChat Broadcasting System, or WBS for short, is 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 revival of WBS was launched in 2009 and is virtually identical to the original community.
Socialthing was a social news aggregator that founded in 2007 and was acquired by AOL the following year for an undisclosed sum. Later renamed AOL Lifestream, the service was a central part of AOL's unsuccessful attempt to compete against upstart social networks such as Facebook.
