WebChat Broadcasting System

WebChat Broadcasting System (or WBS for short) was a virtual community that existed during the 1990s. Supported by online advertising, it was one of few services at the time to offer free integrated community services including chat, homesteading, messaging, and user profiles. Extremely popular in the era before the Dot-com bust, WBS was at one time the largest chat, interactive and event network on the Internet. In 1998 it was acquired by the search engine Infoseek, which was in turn acquired by Disney/ABC. The original WebChat Broadcasting System closed in September 1999 after its chatrooms were integrated into Disney's existing Go Network chatrooms. A revival of WBS was launched in 2009 and is virtually identical to the original community.

WBS featured browser-based chat, real-time discussion, with moderated chat rooms in addition to user-created private chat rooms. Common to webchat, its chat rooms required no software download to use. It allowed users to upload their own images into chat sessions and had three chat modes: streaming, frames, and no frames. In addition to images users could add audio, video, and hotlinks to conversations. WBS also featured other services, such as email, and allowed users to create and maintain personal web pages. Membership was free.

WBS was founded as the Internet Roundtable Society in 1990 by Michael J. Fremont and Wendie Bernstein Lash in Menlo Park, California. It began as an "edutainment" company featuring such content as live Internet broadcasts of interviews with prominent individuals in science, technology, and pop culture, but began focusing on chat in 1993, whereupon the name was changed to the WebChat Broadcasting System.

IRC had existed as a dedicated chatting network but was mostly used by seasoned Internet users. Chat websites capitalized on the growing base of Internet general users by providing a simpler, more attractive chatting interface. Chatting became focused on community and socialization.

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