The Death of Virtual Communities

Okay, I'm gonna begin by making the same apology that everyone who passed this message did. Yes, it's spam, but it's worth it. When it comes to spam, I got way more chuckles per byte than I expected. Of course, I love language humor.

I hope you enjoy these headlines as much as I have. And now to the sad stuff.

On September 30, 1996 the Portal system officially stopped providing access to its customers. You may not realize this, but there are some people who still remember Portal's arrival. There are a lot of "firsts" associated with Portal.

First flat-rate system

Circa 1987, it was the first commercial flat-rate system. Back in the days when CIS and the Well (before Prodigy and AOL existed) charged per hour, Portal made the leap from $4/hour to $10/month. I'll take a lot of credit for convincing John Little to make this change. I told him it should be a like a utility--like cable. We could have premium services, but people don't like to have the meter running.

First net mail system

Portal was also the first commercial "bbs" to provide UUCP (net mail) access. This was in the dark ages of the internet when it was still "illegal" to use the internet for commercial purposes. Portal blazed some legal trails with regard to the National Science Foundation "appropriate use policy." Portal established a gray area by providing UUCP mail access to customer companies that needed to communicate with authorized defense agency sub-contractors. Defense agency contractors like Sun Microsystems widened the gray area by "requiring" their client companies to correspond via email and referring them to Portal.

Boom and plague

Portal grew beyond its Bay Area market by providing international dialup access via Telenet. Remember them!? Thanks to Telenet's consumer product, PC Pursuit, thousands of new "Portalites" started logging in for $30/month for 30 hours/month. PC Pursuit became a victim of its own success and was eventually cancelled by Telenet which decided that it didn't want to get into the phone company business. Because Portal was its busiest PC Pursuit destination, Telenet sent their manager in charge of PC Pursuit to a virtual meeting on Portal where he faced the angry masses. I had the opportunity to moderate that trial by fire. The cancellation of PC Pursuit was tantamount to a virtual plague which killed off Portalites by the thousands--striking a virtual community where it hurts the most--access.

The Information Superhighway Arrives

Telenet became Sprintnet and Portal remained one of its largest destinations. Additionally, Portal joined the Tymnet and Compuserve networks, but access through these public data networks had hourly surcharges for its users. Portal became the first commercial system to provide access via telnet allowing it to provide international access without hourly surcharges. It was way ahead of the competition. Compuserve was just then beginning to offer net mail via its UUCP feed to Ohio State University. Thanks to its ties with Sun, Portal became the first commercial system to provide full-blown internet mail--no more UUCP addressing such as sun!ucbvax!user. With teenage whiz kid Brian Fudge's help, he and I were able to slap together a suite of tools that provided Portal's customers access to ftp and irc giving them access to the "world's largest" file library and chat room! Portal customers have *always* had Usenet news from the very beginning. And some of you may remember the hostile reception that Portalites were given by the Usenet community. It was far worse than AOL's and CIS's. In many ways, Portalites were the internet's first immigrants into a skeptical, anti-commercial, and relatively close-knit community of geeks.

From ISP to ISP Software Developer

Portal is now going to sell its experience as the first ISP to companies that wish to create an online presence. Portal has 10 years of experience in developing accounting and account management software. How many other software companies can point to 10 years of beta testing with thousands of customers?

The Cyber Wake

There is talk of letting the Portalites back on the system so that they can gather in a chat room and hold hands while the "plug is pulled" on the machine. I'm pushing for this ritual because all the hype about the birth of virtual communities has glossed over the imminent death of those communities. Let's face it, when a community exists on a single machine it is very susceptible to market forces--MORE susceptible than your standard, offline community. We all know about how the steel belt rusted, but the cyber belt simply disappears over night. With just two weeks notice, the Portal community has been dispersed after a decade of existence. Some people feel that Portal doesn't have the right to kill the community. We should ponder over this sentiment very carefully as we continue the migration from the public to the private--from public squares to shopping malls and from public spaces such as cities to private spaces such as America Online. When a virtual community goes offline line, we lose something more than the ability to communicate. We lose a part of ourselves.

The Portal Alums

I got my start at Portal as well as many other good folks. Y'all know who you are. My new email address is spartan@actlab.utexas.edu. My new home page is http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/~spartan. Please make a note of it.

Enjoy the headlines which follow--they aren't related to Portal at all, but I'm including them so that this obituary ends with a smile. I hope that the citizens of Portal will be able to gather one last time and hold hands as their tiny village with homes, possessions, and friendships goes offline from under their feet.

--Richard MacKinnon
Virtual Community Expert
University of Texas at Austin

"The Portal System"
circa 1987-1996
Rest in Peace