# What was the first message board? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 24, 2002, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-first-message-board/110613 "2002-05-24T04:20:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Asylum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/53a042/32.png) [@Asylum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asylum)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2002, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-first-message-board/110613/1 "2002-05-24T04:20:02Z")
What was the first message board ever created online? When was it created? Was it public or private? Does it still exist? Also what was the first chat room ever created? Same additional queries as the first question. ---
**Author:** ![Improv\_Geek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b3f665/32.png) [@Improv\_Geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Improv_Geek)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2002, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-first-message-board/110613/2 "2002-05-24T04:29:36Z")
Very tough question, I do not know an exact answer but something to point out is that there was the BBS which was basically message boards and chat rooms before the Internet took off. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2002, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-first-message-board/110613/3 "2002-05-24T04:44:17Z")
If you’re talking about a national communications-type network, the earliest ones were bbs systems that had local phone connections, then shared the disussion threads with other bbs’s using Fidonet. But usenet had already been around for some time, and was much larger. Very soon around that time, CompuServe and The Source started up. CompuServe just grew bigger and bigger, and their forums were awesome. Extremely dense information content. Because it was one of the only publically-accessible forums that the average person could connect to, it rapidly drew in the cream of the crop. If you asked a question about airplanes, the answers were likely to come from two NASA engineers and an airline pilot. The writers forums were full of big name writers. It was great. The Well is another very early global conferencing system. ---
**Author:** ![ski](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbe5ce/32.png) [@ski](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ski)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2002, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-first-message-board/110613/4 "2002-05-24T04:46:04Z")
Yep, there were dial-in BBS’es back in the '80s (from local ones to Compuserve etc.), so it’d probably be impossible to determine the first one. Even if you’re just talking about the internet, it’s still going to be very hard. Heck, you almost have to get into which definition of the internet you want. Because there were chat rooms on the internet before there was the WWW (or at least the graphic version of it). Yah. Good luck with your question. ---
**Author:** ![evilhanz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba8739/32.png) [@evilhanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/evilhanz)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2002, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-first-message-board/110613/5 "2002-05-24T04:56:23Z")
I guess by online, you mean ARPA-internet. The first official online discussion system was the **Message Services Group** or **MsgGroup**. It was basically a mailing list devised in 1975 by Steve Walker, an ARPA program manager. Before that there were a couple of unofficial mailing list discussion groups like SF\_Lovers, for what else? sci-fi fans. As for real-time chat, Telnet allowed this, but I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for.