Old Electronic Watering Holes Are Drying Up

Long before the Internet took off, bulletin boards were the electronic watering holes, places where people could chat across modem lines, post messages or get information on a seemingly endless list of topics.

All it took was a modem and a dial-up account with a bulletin board service, or BBS. Many services were run by local computer hobbyists.

But commercial online services and the Internet now offer a plethora of alt.whatever discussion groups and chat rooms as well as electronic mail. And Internet users can skip from one spot to another around the globe, all without having to dial long-distance phone numbers, as out-of-town bulletin boards required.

As a result, 25% to 50% of the largest bulletin board services have disappeared, many of them becoming Internet service providers, said Robert Basil, an Arizona-based Web site designer. Basil keeps track of nearly 60,000 bulletin boards at https://www.thebbslist.com.

One of the local bulletin boards to disappear was Chips Plus, a BBS launched at the Newport-Mesa Unified School District in 1990 by Addison Ching, the district’s former manager of information services. The BBS had 3,000 subscribers when Ching shut it down after losing his job in a district reshuffling last year. But he said he has no interest in reviving it, largely because the Internet offers so many advantages.

With the Internet, he said, “the geographical constraints are removed.” Bulletin boards tended to be populated by locals who could dial up the BBS without having to call long-distance, he said.

Of course, Ching added, it was a little easier to round up people for a pizza party in those days.

Greg Miller covers high technology for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7830 and at greg.miller@latimes.com.