The WELL in Danger!?!
2002-06-27 15:04:43+00 by
ebradway
4 comments
The Whole Earth 'Letronic Link is in danger of going down with Salon.com. There have been many classic 'assets' of .COMs that have died because of the .COM bubble bursting. But The Well has alot of personal history for me. I haven't participated on the Well since about 1992 because it tends to take WAY too much time out of my life - but it was always nice to know it was still there. If you haven't experienced the Well, give it a try. It's not free, but you get what you pay for!
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comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment made: 2002-06-27 23:36:17+00 by:
Shawn
I don't get it. I've never been to The Well but I think I remember hearing the name from time to time (although never with such reverence and passion until now). It sounds just like a larger version of Flutterby (maybe with a dash of Geocities thrown in). What's supposed to be so all-fired great about it?
#Comment made: 2002-06-28 01:11:15+00 by:
Pete
Everybody's freshman year of college is the biggest deal ever.
Same principal.
#Comment made: 2002-06-28 14:34:08+00 by:
Mike Gunderloy
For many people, the Well was an incredibly important part of cyberspace - one of the first places you could go for serious discussion with other people. I can remember certain moments from the early days when it was the ONLY serious source of news - for example, there were frequent updates during the nasty San Francisco earthquake that told me much more than the big media coverage.
And quite a few cyberspace pioneers did important work on the Well in early days. The EFF was founded as a direct result of Well discussions.
I decided a year or so back that it wasn't for me any longer; things have changed there, or I have (the general "you can't go home again" phenomenon at work). I'll be sad to see this piece of history go down (if it does), even though it's no longer a part of my personal world.
#Comment made: 2002-06-29 00:19:37+00 by:
Dan Lyke
I was never a subscriber, but having lived in the Bay Area for a while I that much of the appeal of The Well was that it had a high proportion of folks with that wide-eyed "the future will save us", the buzz of being in the Bay Area attracting less technical celebrities like Adam Ant and Brian Eno, and that it brought a bunch of disciplines together in one spot. So while FidoNET![[Wiki]](/adbanners/lookingglass.png)
had much of the technical information, it didn't have the hip and cool glamour factor attracting high level non-technical folks, and Compu$erve had too much of the mass market, The Well managed to run that careful middle ground.
It didn't hurt that it was run by folks who were good at marketing and at building community.