Editing Bulletin board system (section)

=== Estimating numbers ===
According to the [[FidoNet]] Nodelist, BBSes reached their peak usage around 1996, the same period when the [[World Wide Web]] and [[AOL]] became mainstream. BBSes rapidly declined in popularity thereafter, and were replaced by systems using the Internet for connectivity. Some of the larger commercial BBSes, such as MaxMegabyte and [[ExecPC BBS]], evolved into [[Internet service provider]]s.

The website ''[[textfiles.com]]'' is an archival history of BBSes. It includes a list of over 100,000 BBSes that once existed during a span of 20 years.<ref>{{Cite web|title=The TEXTFILES.COM BBS List|url=http://bbslist.textfiles.com/|access-date=2021-07-01|website=bbslist.textfiles.com}}</ref> The creator and maintainer of ''textfiles.com'', [[Jason Scott Sadofsky|Jason Scott]], also produced ''[[BBS: The Documentary]]'', a film that chronicles the history of BBSes and has interviews with well-known figures from the BBS heyday.

In the 2000s, most traditional BBS systems migrated to the Internet using Telnet or SSH protocols. As of September 2022, between 900 and 1000 are thought to be active via the Internet {{Snd}}fewer than 30 of these being of the traditional "dial-up" (modem) variety.{{fact|date=April 2025|reason=Is there a list of dial-up modem BBSes?}}