GEnie

GEnie was an online service created by General Electric that ran from 1985 through the end of 1999. Although it was one of the pioneering services in the field, it never grew beyond about 40,000 users and was eventually felled by competition from graphics-based services, most notably AOL.

Early history

GEnie was launched as an ASCII-based service by GE's Information Services division in October 1985, and received attention as the first serious commercial competition to CompuServe. The service was managed by General Electric Information Services (GEIS) based in Rockville, Maryland. GEIS provides a major Electronic Data Interchange service to companies across North America and was able to run GEnie on servers that otherwise would have been underutilized after normal business hours.

The initial price for connection, at both 300 bits per second and the then-high-speed 1200 bits per second, was $5 per hour during "non-prime-time" hours (evenings and weekends) and $36 an hour otherwise, later adjusted to $6 per hour and $18 per hour, respectively. Later, GEnie developed the Star*Services package, soon renamed Genie*Basic after Prodigy threatened a trademark lawsuit over the use of the word "Star". It offered a set of "unlimited use" features for $4.95/month. Other services cost extra, mirroring the tiered service model popular at the time.

GEnie's forums were called RoundTables (RTs), and each had a page number associated with it - akin to a web address today. For some time, GEnie published a bimonthly paper magazine called LiveWire. The service included RTs, games, mail, and shopping.

Lack of commercial success

Although GEnie developed a loyal following, particularly for its hosted forums, it never had enough backing from GE and failed to keep up when Prodigy and America Online produced graphics-based online services that drew the masses. Programs such as Aladdin -- which had been developed earlier by an independent developer and was eventually supported by GEnie -- helped many of the newcomers who came to GEnie from Prodigy and AOL adjust; these were the equivalent of modern-day email programs and newsreaders, incorporating a more user-friendly interface which automated message and mail downloading and posting. GEnie gained members whenever AOL or Prodigy did something to anger their customers, but its marketing was all but non-existent, and word-of-mouth was insufficient to keep it going in the face of the media blitzes from the new services.

In addition, as the Internet gained popularity, GEnie took its time developing GEnie Mail-to-Internet Mail gateways (which did see the light of day, but were cost-prohibitive) and support for Usenet Newsgroups.

GE sold GEnie in 1996 to Yovelle, which was later taken over by IDT. IDT attempted to transition Genie (now all-lowercase) to an internet service provider, but ultimately failed. IDT also attempted to place a GUI on the still text-based service.

Visitors to Genie dropped with the growth of other online services and fell dramatically following a sudden change in the fee structure in 1996. At its peak, GEnie (as it was then called) claimed around 400,000 users. By the final year, insiders reported fewer than 10,000.

On December 4, 1999, it was announced that Genie would close for good on December 27. Remaining users gathered in chat areas of the few Round Tables remaining to say goodbye and "watch the lights go out" at midnight on the 26th. But Genie did not close for four more days and a dwindling number watched at the close of each day. The Round Tables and all areas of Genie, except the Top, became unavailable slightly before midnight on December 30, 1999. There were still several users chatting at the end.