prodigy

Many tech geeks will often say that their first forays into cyberspace began with a 300 baud modem and a BBS. I’m a little younger than that (finally, I can say that!), but I was an early adopter of social networks from when I first opened my 3.5″ floppy of Promenade (later to be called AOL) and signed up to use the service.

I used Prodigy, but I never was a fan of the randomly generated alphanumeric username and didn’t stick around. On the other hand, my first ever interaction on AOL was with someone who was separated from my social network by only one degree. I was 12 at the time, it was 1993, and AOL cost $5.95/hour (after a flat rate of $9.95 which included 5 hours of online usage).