Comments on: In honor of its longevity, this title will be cut o

In honor of its longevity, this title will be cut o

JHarris — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 15:45:34 -0800

Here's Compuserve WOW!, a new youth-oriented online service! Commercials for it. C|Net reports on it. The Chicago Tribune. Christian Science Monitor. Suck is less than enthused. (via Wayback) Advertising Age reports that its "editor" will be the guy who created Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego for PBS. Compuserve WOW! will offer its own features as well as unlimited Internet for the low price of $17.95 a month. It's coming your way Spring of 1996! And closing less than a year later....

By: mwhybark

mwhybark — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 15:54:05 -0800

(Suck link rendereth not, at least for me. ymmv.)

By: oddman

oddman — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 15:54:45 -0800

I still miss Suck.

By: DoctorFedora

DoctorFedora — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 15:56:17 -0800

Even at the time, as a kid, Wow! underwhelmed if only because it was locked to 640x480 full-screen.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 16:06:17 -0800

1996? Who the hell would have paid for this in 1996?

By: toxic

toxic — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 16:10:00 -0800

GuyZero: $18 wasn't entirely outrageous for unlimited dial-up Internet access at the time.

By: CrowGoat

CrowGoat — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 16:11:18 -0800

compuserve started out way back in the 80s with a similar "walled garden." You couldn't even get to the internet back then. I recall when they finally let subscribers access the internet, you had to go by several pages of warnings and beware messages before you could leave. This was prolly an attempt to return to that walled garden with the "think of the children" excuse. Access services never wanted you to leave their home page/site.

By: lazycomputerkids

lazycomputerkids — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 16:16:58 -0800

"portal"

By: mudpuppie

mudpuppie — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 16:19:55 -0800

In sum: How do you prevent American's youngest people from being traumatized by the vile stuff that lurks on the storied World Wide Web while assuring that the rest of its people can enjoy the incredible riches of useful and enlightening information that make up the vast majority of stuff to be had? LOL -- a snapshot from the innocent world before cell phone cameras and sexting and Snapchat.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 16:23:49 -0800

But it wasn't internet. The real nerds of the world would have used regular old internet dialup. This was clearly aimed at the non-nerds but was still waaaaaay too nerdy for normals.

By: chinston

chinston — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 16:59:25 -0800

Has there ever been a mega FPP about suck.com? Hmmm...

By: prize bull octorok

prize bull octorok — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 17:01:40 -0800

I recall when they finally let subscribers access the internet, you had to go by several pages of warnings and beware messages before you could leave. It's funny, the fact that all these corporate user-friendly online services did, in fact, let you click your way on through to the burning garbage mountain of warez and porn that was usenet in the 90s is kind of like if Facebook and Google had not-well-publicized but not-entirely-hidden portals to the Deep Web.

By: Ghostride The Whip

Ghostride The Whip — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 17:05:47 -0800

I had this after running up thousands of dollars on the still-hourly AOL and Prodigy and Compuserve. Probably one of the most significant things in my life now that I think about it.

By: Don Pepino

Don Pepino — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 20:53:26 -0800

"Sure, our new online service is for your family, but with chatcenters full of people who share your interests, it's also for... extended families... 'Catfish is my game.'"

By: njohnson23

njohnson23 — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 21:44:59 -0800

Suck.com was my first internet web daily mind sink. Now it's this place. How time changes...

By: JHarris

JHarris — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 23:06:01 -0800

Somewhere I have a Compuserve CD magazine they distributed (it was "The FUN Issue!!") that had a demo of Wow! on it. It is entirely because of that CD that I remember Wow today, and could make this post on it. Was it worth it? Was Wow worth it when it came out?

By: bicyclefish

bicyclefish — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 05:30:33 -0800

Watch the ad, and then let all the others autoplay. The sets! The props! The actors! That was one hell of an ad buy. Wow.

By: mmascolino

mmascolino — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 09:09:03 -0800

That takes me back to something I totally forgot about. During college (94-98) I co-oped in CompuServe's networking division. On occasion we'd participate in alpha and beta tests of the consumer focused stuff like WOW!

By: usonian

usonian — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 11:43:20 -0800

The music in that first ad is so strange. It screams "erectile dysfunction drug," not "safe wholesome internet for the kids."