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Both 40,000 and 400,000 are listed as the peak number of subscribers for GEnie. Can someone verify which of these is correct?
I used to be STAR on GEnie around 1990. It seems impossible to find information about it online now and I greatly appreciate the collective authors of this article. - Etoile 04:19, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
I was founder and chief excecuitive of GEnie from 1985 through 1991. In 1991, we exceeded 400,000 subscribers. The term "subscribers" was often mis-used in the marketplace at the time. At GEnie, we counted a subscriber as one who was a paying user and had logged in at least once in the prior month. Other services at the time, notably AOL, counted subscribers by the number of 'active email addreses' - hence, one paying cusomer with 3 associated email addresses would be counted as three users (even if they had not logged in or received email.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Blouden ( talk • contribs) 03:02, July 17, 2007
GEnie with the help of subcontractor - Robert Moore/WorldMusic, USA (visit http://www.hdfcp.com for current, also to verify this information, see the GEnie LiveWire newsletter announcement at; http://www.hdfcp.com/bomproducts - select or scroll to "Telecom"), beginning in 1987, was at the forefront of two revolutions, multimedia sharing and live worldwide chat rooms. Though primary clients were in the US, access to GEnie was international, including live chats from anywhere in the world. One such event was hosted live by Robert Moore from London, England in 1989, from the Olympus, where a Computer Trade Fair was taking place. While at the event, and from within the Atari Computer booth, Robert answered live text questions from clients in Hawaii, the US and other parts of the world. Robert Moore founded one of the most popular RoundTables, the MIDIMusic Roundtable (Worldwide Electronic Exchange of Songs, Sounds, Ideas and Information), which was the worlds first multimedia service, starting with MIDI Music, Music and Sound files (actually, second after Robert's own BBS, see "Telecom" link above). Robert's contract with GE/GEnie was from 1987 to 1992, and the MIDIMusic Roundtable was consistently within the top ten RoundTables during that time, many times being the number one Roundtable. In 1989, Robert proposed a new MultiMedia application/language (like, but 5 years before NetScape) to allow visual display and sharing of all types of multimedia, on any computer, using GEnie (and other IS), but that project was never funded. Robert had begun developement of this application in 1985, at his own company (see link above "Telecom", and the product "MidiCom").
RE: Listing the full list of RTs...There was a Macintosh RT (run by Syndicomm); and in the games section, Chess, Checkers, a version of Reversi with some other name; there was also an online Backgammon game for which I was staff until I found it politic to leave. The Writers Ink group --at least some of them navigated to a batch of Yahoo groups called "inkies" http://groups.yahoo.com/group/inkies-admissions. Not many of them stayed since it is a weak substitute. There are MANY boards not listed. I remember a lucid dreaming RT and many others. Someone might try and find out if Alice Amore who edited the GEnie Newsletter is still around. I wouldn't be surprised if she had a list of all the old forums.
Also on GEnie: Max Adams (Screenwriter of Excess Baggage http://seemaxrun.com/ ), Billie Sue Mosiman ( http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/m/billie-sue-mosiman/) Patricia Burroughs (Dallas Screenwriter and Romance Novelist http://patriciaburroughs.com/) The author who originated Indiana Jones was on Writer's Ink.
(Inside information: The CB Simulator received a lot of internal "beta" testing in the Spring of 1985 as a primary means for GEIS employees to share rumors and waste time waiting for a major layoff that was well-known to be pending. It took weeks for management to get their act together and finally, on May 22, 1985 it happened, decimating a third of the 400+ person Engineering Department and substantial numbers of employees elsewhere. The new GEnie group absorbed a few of the engineers, including one who had written the round-table software in his spare time. He was a C-compiler engineer assigned to help a 3rd-party company port their product onto the Mark III system from UNIX (but not for GEnie.) The file systems were so different he saw it would be faster to write a new product rather than port the UNIX one and did it himself just to prove he was right. That pet project became the GEnie RoundTables. Today that guy is a CTO for an Internet company.)
Was not Vaughn Rockney (famous in the commercial world for C64 utilities) a significant part in the conception of the CB-simulator? I was an employee of GEIS (1984-1989) and a "beta" tester. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.36.20.5 ( talk) 13:17, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
Please note this comment is ludicrous: The White House RoundTable for discussing the press releases and actions of the Clinton administration.
The Clinton Admin did not last from 1985-1999. The White House RT discussed the current administration, whatever it was at the time. 81-89 was Reagon, 89-93 was BushGHW, 1993-end of GEnie was Clinton
Please do not remove this section or move its contents to other parts of the article. It is intended to have additional material of which the Babylon 5 information is an example. The section is to show what effect GEnie has had to U.S. and world culture. Gentaur 20:24, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Could someone please moderate this revert war with DavidWBrooks. I don't think the reverts are warranted. Gentaur 21:01, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps the secret history part was hyperbole, in hindsight, but from the perspective of someone who saw the beginnings on GEnie of a number of things that are taken for granted now, GEnie's influence is underrated. As I keep trying to point out, the Babylon 5 information is not supposed to be the whole of the section. GEnie encompassed a wide variety of fields covered by the RoundTables, including science, space, emergency response (recovery efforts for disasters like the Loma Prieta earthquake were coordinated on GEnie), game design, operating systems, electronics, philosophy, social science, politics, law enforcement, medicine, sports, and more. Important people in those fields did in fact use the RoundTables for networking and collaborating with peers. That history should not be lost, and I created the section for others to add the history they know. It's not just books and TV shows. Gentaur 05:29, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
There doesn't seem to be any record of a change I made on Dec. 24--it's not even showing up on the history page. I wrote something like: ""GEnie, along with the CompuServe forums, newsgroups and mailing lists, were a precursor to Internet discussion groups such as blogs. Cory Doctorow, for example, was active on GEnie in the early 90s," and then I explained a bit about who Cory is. Did someone edit that out of existence? If so, why? Mitchwagner 14:58, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Something that is probably worth adding here, is how GEnie proved its usefulness in an emergency. For example, I recall there was a major earthquake in San Francisco that knocked out phone service. Though the long distance phone lines were down, the GEnie network was up, and people could get messages out via GEnie chat. Many (outside of SF) volunteers stationed themselves in GEnie chat rooms to talk to the stranded GEnie members who were in SF, so that they could pass along messages to anxious loved ones in other parts of the country. I was very proud of GEnie's community that day, and it was a good early example of how online communication was a valuable addition to the ways that we stay in touch. Elonka 21:19, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
User:Cas510's reversion is correct - the system was best known as GEnie due to its General Electric beginnings, and the article should consistently refer to it as GEnie, not Genie. Tvoz 23:19, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
I've heard of other SF authors on GEnie. Is this something that you're going by printed interviews, usenet posts, or something else? Thanks.
I'm curious because I've heard the Scribblies were also on GEnie...
=Chica= 05:49, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
The lists seems pretty crufty to me. Are they encyclopaedic, notable and verifiable? Kenilworth Terrace ( talk) 08:10, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
The screenshot of GEnie running on a Macintosh appears to actually be the GUI on an Apple IIGS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.15.255.228 ( talk) 05:33, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Both 40,000 and 400,000 are listed as the peak number of subscribers for GEnie. Can someone verify which of these is correct?
I used to be STAR on GEnie around 1990. It seems impossible to find information about it online now and I greatly appreciate the collective authors of this article. - Etoile 04:19, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
I was founder and chief excecuitive of GEnie from 1985 through 1991. In 1991, we exceeded 400,000 subscribers. The term "subscribers" was often mis-used in the marketplace at the time. At GEnie, we counted a subscriber as one who was a paying user and had logged in at least once in the prior month. Other services at the time, notably AOL, counted subscribers by the number of 'active email addreses' - hence, one paying cusomer with 3 associated email addresses would be counted as three users (even if they had not logged in or received email.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Blouden ( talk • contribs) 03:02, July 17, 2007
GEnie with the help of subcontractor - Robert Moore/WorldMusic, USA (visit http://www.hdfcp.com for current, also to verify this information, see the GEnie LiveWire newsletter announcement at; http://www.hdfcp.com/bomproducts - select or scroll to "Telecom"), beginning in 1987, was at the forefront of two revolutions, multimedia sharing and live worldwide chat rooms. Though primary clients were in the US, access to GEnie was international, including live chats from anywhere in the world. One such event was hosted live by Robert Moore from London, England in 1989, from the Olympus, where a Computer Trade Fair was taking place. While at the event, and from within the Atari Computer booth, Robert answered live text questions from clients in Hawaii, the US and other parts of the world. Robert Moore founded one of the most popular RoundTables, the MIDIMusic Roundtable (Worldwide Electronic Exchange of Songs, Sounds, Ideas and Information), which was the worlds first multimedia service, starting with MIDI Music, Music and Sound files (actually, second after Robert's own BBS, see "Telecom" link above). Robert's contract with GE/GEnie was from 1987 to 1992, and the MIDIMusic Roundtable was consistently within the top ten RoundTables during that time, many times being the number one Roundtable. In 1989, Robert proposed a new MultiMedia application/language (like, but 5 years before NetScape) to allow visual display and sharing of all types of multimedia, on any computer, using GEnie (and other IS), but that project was never funded. Robert had begun developement of this application in 1985, at his own company (see link above "Telecom", and the product "MidiCom").
RE: Listing the full list of RTs...There was a Macintosh RT (run by Syndicomm); and in the games section, Chess, Checkers, a version of Reversi with some other name; there was also an online Backgammon game for which I was staff until I found it politic to leave. The Writers Ink group --at least some of them navigated to a batch of Yahoo groups called "inkies" http://groups.yahoo.com/group/inkies-admissions. Not many of them stayed since it is a weak substitute. There are MANY boards not listed. I remember a lucid dreaming RT and many others. Someone might try and find out if Alice Amore who edited the GEnie Newsletter is still around. I wouldn't be surprised if she had a list of all the old forums.
Also on GEnie: Max Adams (Screenwriter of Excess Baggage http://seemaxrun.com/ ), Billie Sue Mosiman ( http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/m/billie-sue-mosiman/) Patricia Burroughs (Dallas Screenwriter and Romance Novelist http://patriciaburroughs.com/) The author who originated Indiana Jones was on Writer's Ink.
(Inside information: The CB Simulator received a lot of internal "beta" testing in the Spring of 1985 as a primary means for GEIS employees to share rumors and waste time waiting for a major layoff that was well-known to be pending. It took weeks for management to get their act together and finally, on May 22, 1985 it happened, decimating a third of the 400+ person Engineering Department and substantial numbers of employees elsewhere. The new GEnie group absorbed a few of the engineers, including one who had written the round-table software in his spare time. He was a C-compiler engineer assigned to help a 3rd-party company port their product onto the Mark III system from UNIX (but not for GEnie.) The file systems were so different he saw it would be faster to write a new product rather than port the UNIX one and did it himself just to prove he was right. That pet project became the GEnie RoundTables. Today that guy is a CTO for an Internet company.)
Was not Vaughn Rockney (famous in the commercial world for C64 utilities) a significant part in the conception of the CB-simulator? I was an employee of GEIS (1984-1989) and a "beta" tester. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.36.20.5 ( talk) 13:17, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
Please note this comment is ludicrous: The White House RoundTable for discussing the press releases and actions of the Clinton administration.
The Clinton Admin did not last from 1985-1999. The White House RT discussed the current administration, whatever it was at the time. 81-89 was Reagon, 89-93 was BushGHW, 1993-end of GEnie was Clinton
Please do not remove this section or move its contents to other parts of the article. It is intended to have additional material of which the Babylon 5 information is an example. The section is to show what effect GEnie has had to U.S. and world culture. Gentaur 20:24, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Could someone please moderate this revert war with DavidWBrooks. I don't think the reverts are warranted. Gentaur 21:01, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps the secret history part was hyperbole, in hindsight, but from the perspective of someone who saw the beginnings on GEnie of a number of things that are taken for granted now, GEnie's influence is underrated. As I keep trying to point out, the Babylon 5 information is not supposed to be the whole of the section. GEnie encompassed a wide variety of fields covered by the RoundTables, including science, space, emergency response (recovery efforts for disasters like the Loma Prieta earthquake were coordinated on GEnie), game design, operating systems, electronics, philosophy, social science, politics, law enforcement, medicine, sports, and more. Important people in those fields did in fact use the RoundTables for networking and collaborating with peers. That history should not be lost, and I created the section for others to add the history they know. It's not just books and TV shows. Gentaur 05:29, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
There doesn't seem to be any record of a change I made on Dec. 24--it's not even showing up on the history page. I wrote something like: ""GEnie, along with the CompuServe forums, newsgroups and mailing lists, were a precursor to Internet discussion groups such as blogs. Cory Doctorow, for example, was active on GEnie in the early 90s," and then I explained a bit about who Cory is. Did someone edit that out of existence? If so, why? Mitchwagner 14:58, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Something that is probably worth adding here, is how GEnie proved its usefulness in an emergency. For example, I recall there was a major earthquake in San Francisco that knocked out phone service. Though the long distance phone lines were down, the GEnie network was up, and people could get messages out via GEnie chat. Many (outside of SF) volunteers stationed themselves in GEnie chat rooms to talk to the stranded GEnie members who were in SF, so that they could pass along messages to anxious loved ones in other parts of the country. I was very proud of GEnie's community that day, and it was a good early example of how online communication was a valuable addition to the ways that we stay in touch. Elonka 21:19, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
User:Cas510's reversion is correct - the system was best known as GEnie due to its General Electric beginnings, and the article should consistently refer to it as GEnie, not Genie. Tvoz 23:19, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
I've heard of other SF authors on GEnie. Is this something that you're going by printed interviews, usenet posts, or something else? Thanks.
I'm curious because I've heard the Scribblies were also on GEnie...
=Chica= 05:49, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
The lists seems pretty crufty to me. Are they encyclopaedic, notable and verifiable? Kenilworth Terrace ( talk) 08:10, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
The screenshot of GEnie running on a Macintosh appears to actually be the GUI on an Apple IIGS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.15.255.228 ( talk) 05:33, 27 September 2014 (UTC)