Online Encyclopedia
CompuServe
CompuServe was a major online service during the 1980s and 1990s before it was sidelined by the rise of GUI-based services such as America Online. One of the "big three" US based services, both The Source and GEnie were squeezed out of the market because of CompuServe's extensive and growing userbase, an early example of Metcalf's Law. CompuServe was itself later sidelined by the rise of GUI-based services such as America Online, and the spreading use of the internet. Today the company operates as an internet service provider (ISP), owned by AOL.
History
CompuServe started in 1969 as a computer time-sharing service, originally as a way to generate income from H&R Block's mainframe computers outside business hours.
In 1979, CompuServe became the first service to offer electronic mail capabilities and technical support to personal computer users. The company broke new ground again in 1980 as the first online service to offer real-time chat with its CB Simulator .
In order to provide access to users all over the country, and the world, CompuServe could be accessed over the Tymnet or Telenet packet switching network. This was an expensive service, so CompuServe started installing their own access points across the country. By 1982 the network had become extensive enough that they formed a Network Services Division to provide wide-area networking capabilities to corporate clients.
Although CompuServe had an extensive national dialup network within the United States of its own, it also forged alliances with private networks Tymnet and Telenet , giving CompuServe the largest selection of local dialup phone connections in the USA. Other networks permitted CompuServe access to still more locations, including outside the U.S., usually with substantial connect-time surcharges. It was not unusual in the early 1980s to have to pay a $30 per hour charge to connect to CompuServe, which at that time was a $5-$6 per hour service.
By the mid-1980s CompuServe was the online service. Anyone interested in being online was online on CompuServe, or CIS for short, and the service continued to improve in terms of user interface and offerings. No one could compete, and in 1989 CompuServe purchased and dismantled its main competitor, The Source.
CompuServe led the interactive services industry worldwide, entering the international arena in Japan in 1986 with Fujitsu and Nisso Iwai , developing a Japanese language version of CompuServe called NIFTYSERVE in 1989. Fujitsu and CompuServe also co-developed WorldsAway , a prototype interactive community featuring a virtual world called Dreamscape and avatars representing the participants. In the late 1980s, it was possible to log into CompuServe via worldwide X.25 packet switching networks (via the Telnet protocol), but gradually it introduced its own direct dialup access network in many countries, a more economical solution.
In the early years of the 1990s, CompuServe was enormously popular, with hundreds of thousands of users visiting its thousands of moderated Forums, forerunners to the endless variety of discussion sites on the Web today. Among these were many where hardware and software companies offered customer support. This broadened the audience from primarily business users to the technical "geek" crowd, some of which migrated over from the Byte Magazine's Bix online service , but over time CompuServe also attracted a broad general public.
During the early 1990s the hourly rate fell from over $10 an hour to $1.95 an hour. In April 1995 , CompuServe topped three million members and launched its NetLauncher service, providing WWW access capability via the Spry Mosaic browser. AOL introduced a far cheaper flat rate, unlimited time, price plan in the U.S. to compete with CompuServe's hourly charges, and this, combined with massive AOL advertising campaigns, caused significant loss of customers until CompuServe responded with a similar plan of its own at $24.95 per month in late 1997.
As the internet grew in popularity with the general public, company after company closed their once busy CompuServe customer support forums to offer customer support to a larger audience directly through company websites, an area which the CompuServe forums of the time couldn't address because they hadn't yet introduced universal WWW access. CompuServe forums today have largely ceased to provide the very broad coverage of the past and are more tightly linked to CompuServe channels.
In 1997 AOL announced its intention to acquire the company, at that time CompuServe represented around 12% of the US ISP market. A complex deal was set up involving WorldCom to avoid anti-trust action, AOL then having almost 40% of the US ISP market. The deal was completed in September of that year, CompuServe costing WorldCom $1.2 billion in an all-stock deal with H&R Block. The online services division of CompuServe was then sold to AOL for $175 million.
CompuServe's positioning is now as the value market provider with several million customers, as part of the AOL Web Products Group. Recent U.S. versions of the CompuServe client software -- essentially an enhanced web browser -- use the Gecko layout engine developed for Mozilla, within a derivative of the AOL client and using the AOL dialup network. It is currently in version 7.0. The previous Classic product remains available in the US and also in other countries where CompuServe 2000 is not offered, notably the UK and Asia-Pacific region, and is at version 4.0.2.
In September 2003 CompuServe added CompuServe Basic to its product lines, selling via Netscape.com and AOL offering it to AOL members leaving that service, possibly in response to reports earlier that year that AOL was losing significant business to low cost competitors [1][2].
In the Pacific region (Australia, New Zealand, etc.) Fujitsu Australia runs the CompuServe Pacific franchise which in 1998 had 35,000 customers and are predicted to have much less now thanks to their pricing plans, which have not been changed since 1998 (for eg. A$14.95 for 2 hours per month).
Technology and Law
One popular use of CompuServe in the 1980s was file exchange, pictures in particular. CompuServe introduced a simple black-and-white image format known as RLE (run-length-encoding) to standardize the images so they could be shared among different microcomputer platforms. With the introduction of more powerful machines, universally supporting color, CompuServe introduced the much more capable GIF format. GIF has gone on to become almost universal for images that are not 24-bits, even though several competitors have attempted to take it's place.
In 1995 CompuServe set what privacy advocates argued was a bad precedent by blocking access to sex-oriented newsgroups after being pressured by conservative Bavarian prosecutors. In 1997, after CompuServe reopened the newsfeeds, Felix Somm, the former managing director for CompuServe Germany, was charged with violating German child pornography laws because of the material CompuServe's network was carrying into Germany. He was convicted and sentenced to two years probation on May 28, 1998 [3] [4]. He was cleared on appeal on November 17, 1999 [5] [6]. The requirement for censorship in Germany caused some loss of German members.