The WELL is for sale. When people talk about online community, their frame of reference– whether they know it or not–has been shaped profoundly by the experience of The WELL.
I didn’t get to experience Paris in the twenties, New York in the fifties, or San Francisco in the sixties, but I did spend too much time on The WELL in the early nineties. It’s where I, and a lot of other future Web pioneers, first learned about the Internet and about net culture.
Twenty years after its founding, The WELL’s current owner, Salon.com is selling the service. Despite billions spent in lip service to building community and hundreds of millions of new users, the Internet has not delivered another community with the magic that The WELL had.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.