The First Social Network

SF Net, launched in the spring of 1991. It was a pioneering network of public terminals in San Francisco cafés that offered chat, email and online forums at the same time Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN, was in the process of developing the protocols that would bring us "the Web".  At the time, neither “internet cafés” nor “social networks” existed as known concepts.

Because its terminals were placed in cafés and provided internet email access, SF Net was later described as the first  “internet café”. In truth, the café locations were the heart of this community outreach system allowing anyone with a few quarters access to this growing, eclectic community - hundreds of users chatting, sharing ideas, and forming real friendships entirely online. SF Net was intended as a social (community) network  from its inception, not an information resource.

That virtual community quickly spilled into the physical world. Since the entire system was concentrated in the San Francisco Bay Area, members naturally began organizing gatherings (NetGets) at the very same cafés that hosted the terminals, turning online connections into real-life gatherings. SF Net was therefore both a true virtual community and an organic meetup community—the first service to seamlessly blend the two, years before Friendster, MySpace, or Facebook. Hence, SF Net was the first Social Network.