---
tags: [world-wide-web, computer-history, internet, bulletin-boards]
created: Monday, November 04, 2024
---

# 241fe1a3_the_Web_versus_modem_BBSs

As access to the Web and the demand for public access grew, services like AOL,
which provided dial-up access to a subset of the broader Internet (along with
email and chat-rooms) became increasingly redundant.

In response to this, they pivoted in their marketing to presenting their service
as a safe, curated means of accessing the information: the Web was confusing, it
was hard to know what was out there and how to find useful information.

By using AOL, you would know which sites to visit for different tasks and which
of these were reputable. They adopted a kind of friendly gatekeeper persona in
the era of unhampered and universal access to information that the Web heralded
and embodied.

(This isn't so strange if we consider that outside of work (and the communities
of computer enthusiasts), personal computers were still relatively new and
computers themselves still rather forbidding entities.)

This function of a gateway to the overwhelming content of the web would be taken
up first by browsers
([Mosaic's](c301a0b3-1d8_Mosaic_Netscape_and_Browser_Wars.md) landing page would
list websites for specific sources of information and user tasks and links to
other directories) and then of course search engines which would allow users to
search for what they needed against an index (usually a subset) of the Web's
total content. (Interestingly in this regard, AOL would eventually buy
Netscape.)

AOL et al made sense when users wanted access to the internet and the web didn't
yet exist. Different networks had different access criteria and were often
poorly signposted, accessible only to those in the know. Private commercial
networks were set up to service typical consumer needs (news, banking, weather
reports etc) but the whole point of the Web as conceived by TBL was to make
everything available to anyone who wanted it through a streamlined and universal
set of protocols.
