Popular social computing began in the late-1970s with the emergence of dial-up bulletin-board systems (BBS). For nearly two decades before the privatization of the state-sponsored internet, tens of thousands of dial-up computer networks were run out of the homes and offices of hobbyists, volunteers, and entrepreneurs throughout North America. It was on these “boards” that personal computer owners first began to use their machines for popular communication: chatting with friends, flirting with strangers, debating politics with neighbors, and trading information with peers. Participants in the BBSing movement were a vanguard in networked personal computing. Their experiments in community-building established the foundation on which today's social computing was built.