Editing CompuServe (section)

===Internet===
CompuServe was the first online service to offer [[Internet]] connectivity, albeit with limited access, as early as 1989,<ref name="CSInternet">{{Cite magazine |last=Lee |first=Yvonne |year=1989 |title=Compuserve, MCI Mail Introduce Gateways To Internet Network |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wDAEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT31 |magazine=[[InfoWorld]] |volume=11 |issue=39 |page=32}}</ref> when it connected its proprietary [[e-mail]] service to allow incoming and outgoing messages to be exchanged with Internet-based e-mail addresses.

During the early 1990s, CompuServe had hundreds of thousands of users visiting its thousands of moderated forums, forerunners to the discussion sites of the [[WWW|World Wide Web]].  (Like the Web, many forums were managed by independent producers who then administered the forum and recruited moderators, termed [[sysop]]s.) Among these were many in which [[computer hardware]] and [[software]] companies offered [[customer support|customer assistance]]. This broadened the audience from primarily [[business]] users to the technical "[[geek]]" crowd, some of whom had earlier used ''[[Byte Magazine]]''{{'}}s [[Byte Information Exchange|Bix online service]].

There were special forums, special groups, but many had "relatively large premiums" (as did "some premium data bases" with charges of "$7.50 each time you enter a search request".<ref name=CIS1.NYT/>)

In 1992, CompuServe hosted the first known [[WYSIWYG]] e-mail content and forum posts.<ref name="Inc.1994">{{Cite journal |date=February 21, 1994 |title=InfoWorld, CompuServe users can work off-line, save money |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BzsEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA22 |journal=InfoWorld  |pages=22 |issn=0199-6649}}</ref> Fonts, colors and emoticons were encoded into 7-bit text-based messages via the third-party product [[NavCIS]] (by Dvorak Development) operating with the operating systems [[DOS]] and [[Windows 3.1]], and later, [[Windows 95]].<ref name="Inc.1996">{{Cite journal |date=May 14, 1996 |title=PC Mag, Making the Most of Online Time |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NGNpFuAXu70C&pg=PA73 |journal=PC Magazine: The Independent Guide to IBM-Standard Personal Computing |publisher=Ziff Davis, Inc. |pages=73 |issn=0888-8507}}</ref>  NavCIS included features for offline work, similar to [[offline reader]]s used with [[bulletin board system]]s, allowing users to connect to the service and exchange new mail and forum content in a largely automated fashion. Once the "run" was complete, the user edited their messages locally while offline. The system also allowed interactive navigation of the system to support services like the chat system. Many of these services remained text based.

CompuServe later introduced [[CompuServe Information Manager]] (CIM) to compete more directly with AOL. Unlike Navigator, CIM was adapted for online work, and used a [[point-and-click]] interface very similar to AOLs. Later versions interacted with the hosts using the  ''HMI'' communications protocol. For some types of service which were not compatible with HMI, the older text-based interface could be used. WinCIM also allowed caching of forum messages, news articles and e-mail, so that reading and posting could be performed offline, without incurring hourly connection costs. Previously, this was a luxury of the [[NavCIS]], [[AutoSIG]] and [[TapCIS]] applications for [[power user]]s.

CIS users could purchase services and software from other CompuServe members using their CompuServe account, something Internet users could not do until the [[NSFNET]] lifted the prohibition on commercial Internet use in 1989.

During the early 1990s, the hourly rate decreased from more than $10 per hour to $1.95 per hour. In March 1992, it began online signups with credit card based payments and a desktop application to connect online and check emails. In April 1995, CompuServe had more than three million members, still the largest online service provider, and began its NetLauncher service, providing [[WWW]] access capability via [[IBox|Spry]], a [[Mosaic (web browser)|Mosaic]] browser. AOL, however, introduced a much cheaper flat-rate, unlimited-time, advertisement-funded price plan in the US to compete with CompuServe's hourly charges. In conjunction with AOL's marketing campaigns, this caused a significant loss of customers until CompuServe responded with a similar plan of its own at $24.95 per month in late 1997.<ref>{{Cite news |date=September 9, 1997 |title=AOL to acquire CompuServe's customers |work=Gadsden Times |agency=Associated Press |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=J70fAAAAIBAJ&pg=5984%2C800701 |access-date=September 4, 2012}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Flynn |first=Laurie J. |date=September 9, 1997 |title=AOL to maintain two services |work=The Dispatch |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=4JcbAAAAIBAJ&pg=5204%2C756538 |access-date=September 4, 2012}}</ref>

As the World Wide Web grew in popularity with the general public, company after company terminated their once-busy CompuServe customer assistance forums to offer customer assistance to a larger audience directly through their own company [[website]]s, an activity which the CompuServe forums of the time could not address because they did not yet have universal WWW access.

In 1992, CompuServe acquired [[Mark Cuban]]'s company, MicroSolutions, for $6 million.<ref>{{Cite web |date=March 20, 2017 |title=Cuban Revolution |url=https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/cuban-revolution/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191102200923/https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/cuban-revolution/ |archive-date=November 2, 2019 |access-date=November 2, 2019 |website=Texas Monthly |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Fiorillo |first=Steve |date=January 22, 2019 |title=What Is Mark Cuban's Net Worth? |url=https://www.thestreet.com/lifestyle/mark-cuban-net-worth-14842250 |access-date=November 2, 2019 |website=TheStreet |language=en}}</ref>

AOL's entry into the PC market in 1991 marked the beginning of the end for CIS. AOL charged $2.95 an hour versus $5.00 an hour for CompuServe. AOL used a freely available [[graphical user interface]]-based client; CompuServe's wasn't free, and it only had a subset of the system's functionality. In response, CIS decreased its hourly rates on several occasions. Subsequently, AOL switched to a monthly subscription instead of hourly rates, so for active users AOL was much less expensive. By late 1994, CompuServe was offering "unlimited use of the standard services (including news, sports, weather) ... and limited electronic mail"{{efn|The per-message fee for e-mail from outside CompuServe was 15 cents, even for spam.<ref name=CIS1.NYT/>}} for $8.95 per month {{En dash}} what ''The New York Times'' called "probably the best deal."<ref name=CIS1.NYT/>

CIS's number of users grew, maximizing in April 1995 at 3 million worldwide. By this time AOL had more than 20 million users in the United States alone, but this was less than their maximum of 27 million, due to customers quitting for lesser-cost offerings. By 1997 the number of users quitting all online services for dial-up [[Internet service provider]]s was reaching a climax.

In 1997, CompuServe began converting its forums from its proprietary Host-Micro Interface (HMI) to [[HTML]] web standards.<ref>{{Cite web |date=July 19, 2012 |title=WUGNET to Provide Computing Support Forums for CompuServe's "CSi '97"… |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1997_Sept_23/ai_19777330/ |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120719195645/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1997_Sept_23/ai_19777330/ |archive-date=July 19, 2012 |access-date=January 31, 2020 |website=archive.is}}</ref> The 1997 change discontinued text based access to the forums, but the forums were accessible both through the web as well as through CompuServe's proprietary HMI protocol. In 2004 CompuServe discontinued HMI and converted the forums to web access only. The forums remained active on CompuServe.com until the end of 2017.