#Web30 is trending heavily. Fascinating stuff on Twitter tonight. People sharing their experiences. I’d encourage everyone to check out the birthday celebration.
btw, I’m aware some people consider earlier dates. It comes down to the difference in the Internet and World Wide Web.
Oh WTH, I’m willing to roll with March 12, 1989. That’s a good a date as another. 
I’m ready to party!
Happy Birthday World Wide Web!!! 
The World Wide Web caught on fast.
** early days** just before the WWW
I briefly had a Compu Serve Account in 1988. Couldn’t afford the long distance phone bills.
I logged into several local BBS, most were hosted by hobbyists at local companies. Entergy hosted a nice one. Ad free!
Byte Magazine featured very cool software utilities in every month’s issue. They were available for download on Byte’s BBS in California. Another long distance phone charge. But they were awesome programs with the source code.
**WWW **
I didn’t become aware of the World Wide Web until around 1993 or 94. We got a connection at work. I ran Mosaic on a Vaxstation and connected to News Sources and The Weather Underground. The VaxStation was networked and my employer had a gateway to the WWW.
PC Magazine also featured awesome Software Utilities and Drivers with source code. I downloaded regularly from their BBS.
I learned so much by studying the source code. It made me a much better Systems level programmer. I wrote several TSR (terminate and stay resident) utilities for fun.
Although I made my living writing business programming. Mostly payroll and accounting programs.
Pre internet/WWW I had a Compuserve account, but didn’t get much use from it. Around 89/90 a friend prodded me to get an AOL account so I could play VGA Planets via e-mail.
I started work in '91 and discovered Usenet News Groups via our Unix based e-mail. From there I become proficient in Telenet and FTP. In fact my fist ISP/e-mail wan’t even a dial up - I had to telenet in from my work computer. Around '93 (or so) one of my on-line PC Gaming leagues (Front Page Sports Football, where you uploaded/downloaded league files) switched to Web Based. When I told our commissioner I didn’t even know what that was, he told me about Lynx - a text based Web Browser where you tabbed through the text to find the hotlinks. That was my first exposure to the web.
Facebook and Instagram celebrate the day after by going down for a lot of users.
Nice way to start the 2nd 30 years.
Lol.
I was an AOL user – 1997. I think a portion of my grey hair is due to AOL and that continuous busy signal. Lol.
Eventually I found MSN and their forums and chats. This opened doors to friends and even a poetry compilation book.
It’s weird to try to imagine what I’d be like now if the WWW had never existed.