There were absolutely successful networks. AOL (America Online) was the biggest, while CompuServe was the older one.
I remember (alas) consciously choosing not to invest in .com domain names in the mid-90's because I assumed both they and AOL room names (if that was the term?) would just be passing fads on the way to whatever better newer network would exist ten years later, with a newer name system.
The internet absolutely had to overcome America Online, at least in the US. (It helped that, early on, many/most people could access the internet via AOL, before local ISP's became widespread.)
There were absolutely successful networks. AOL (America Online) was the biggest, while CompuServe was the older one.
I remember (alas) consciously choosing not to invest in .com domain names in the mid-90's because I assumed both they and AOL room names (if that was the term?) would just be passing fads on the way to whatever better newer network would exist ten years later, with a newer name system.
The internet absolutely had to overcome America Online, at least in the US. (It helped that, early on, many/most people could access the internet via AOL, before local ISP's became widespread.)