Bulletin board system in the context of Social networking service

An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks. One of the first magazines to convert from a print magazine format to an online only magazine was the computer magazine Datamation. Some online magazines distributed through the World Wide Web call themselves webzines. An ezine (also spelled e-zine) is a more specialized term appropriately used for small magazines and newsletters distributed by any electronic method, for example, by email.

Some social groups may use the terms cyberzine and hyperzine when referring to electronically distributed resources. Similarly, some online magazines may refer to themselves as "electronic magazines", "digital magazines", or "e-magazines" to reflect their readership demographics or to capture alternative terms and spellings in online searches. An online magazine shares some features with a blog and also with online newspapers, but can usually be distinguished by its approach to editorial control. Magazines typically have editors or editorial boards who review submissions and perform a quality control function to ensure that all material meets the expectations of the publishers (those investing time or money in its production) and the readership.

A sysop (/ˈsɪs.ɒp/, SIS-op; an abbreviation of system operator, and sometimes further abbreviated to just op) is an administrator of a multi-user computer system, such as a bulletin board system (BBS) or an online service virtual community. The phrase may also be used to refer to administrators of other Internet-based network services. Sysops typically do not earn money, but donate their activity to the community.

Co-sysops are users who may be granted certain admin privileges on a BBS. Generally, they help validate users and monitor discussion forums. Some co-sysops serve as file clerks, reviewing, describing, and publishing newly uploaded files into appropriate download directories.

An online service provider (OSP) can, for example, be an Internet service provider, an email provider, a news provider (press), an entertainment provider (music, movies), a search engine, an e-commerce site, an online banking site, a health site, an official government site, social media, a wiki, or a Usenet newsgroup.

In its original more limited definition, it referred only to a commercial computer communication service in which paid members could dial via a computer modem the service's private computer network and access various services and information resources such as bulletin board systems, downloadable files and programs, news articles, chat rooms, and electronic mail services. The term "online service" was also used in references to these dial-up services. The traditional dial-up online service differed from the modern Internet service provider in that they provided a large degree of content that was only accessible by those who subscribed to the online service, while ISP mostly serves to provide access to the Internet and generally provides little if any exclusive content of its own.

An emoticon (/əˈmoʊtəkɒn/, ə-MOH-tə-kon, rarely /ɪˈmɒtɪkɒn/, ih-MOTT-ih-kon), portmanteau of emotion and icon, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers and letters—to express a person's feelings, mood or reaction, without needing to describe it in detail.

ASCII emoticons can be traced back hundreds of years with various one-off uses. The protocol as a way to use them to communicate emotion in conversations is credited to computer scientist Scott Fahlman, who proposed what came to be known as "smileys"—:-) and :-(—in a message on the bulletin board system (BBS) of Carnegie Mellon University in 1982. In Western countries, emoticons are usually written at a right angle to the direction of the text. Users from Japan popularized a kind of emoticon called kaomoji, using Japanese's larger character sets. This style arose on ASCII NET of Japan in 1986. They are also known as verticons (from vertical emoticon) due to their readability without rotations. This is often seen as the 1st generation of emoticons.

Usenet (/ˈjuːznɛt/), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980. Users read and post messages (called articles or posts, and collectively termed news) to one or more topic categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to the Internet forums that were developed after the introduction of the World Wide Web. Discussions are threaded, as with web forums and BBSes, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.

A major difference between a BBS or web message board and Usenet is the absence of a central server and dedicated administrator or hosting provider. Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing set of news servers that store and forward messages to one another via "news feeds". Individual users may read messages from and post to a local (or simply preferred) news server, which can be operated by anyone, and those posts will automatically be forwarded to any other news servers peered with the local one, while the local server will receive any news its peers have that it currently lacks. This results in the automatic proliferation of content posted by any user on any server to any other user subscribed to the same newsgroups on other servers.

U.S. Robotics Corporation, often called USR, is a company that produces USRobotics computer modems and related products. Its initial marketing was aimed at bulletin board systems, where its high-speed HST protocol made FidoNet transfers much faster. During the 1990s it became a major consumer brand with its Sportster line. The company had a reputation for high quality and support for the latest communications standards as they emerged, notably in its V.Everything line, released in 1996.

With the reduced usage of voiceband modems in North America in the early 21st century, USR began branching out into new markets. The company purchased Palm, Inc. for its Pilot PDA, but was itself purchased by 3Com soon after. 3Com spun off USR again in 2000, keeping Palm and returning USR to the now much smaller modem market. After 2004 the company is formally known as USR. USR is now a division of UNICOM Global, and is one of the few providers left in the modem market today. The division employs about 125 people worldwide.

The Warez scene, often referred to as The Scene, is an underground network of piracy groups specialized in obtaining and illegally releasing digital media before their official release date. The Scene distributes all forms of digital media, including computer games, movies, TV shows, music, and pornography. This network is meant to be hidden from the public, with the files shared only with members of the community. However, as files became commonly leaked outside the community and their popularity grew, some individuals from The Scene began leaking files and uploading them to file-hosts, torrents and EDonkey Networks.

The Scene has no central leadership, location, or other organizational culture. The groups themselves create a rule set for each Scene category (for example, MP3 or TV) that then becomes the active rules for encoding material. These rule sets include a rigid set of requirements that warez groups (shortened as "grps") must follow in releasing and managing material. The groups must follow these rules when uploading material and, if the release has a technical error or breaks a rule, other groups may "nuke" (flag as bad content) the release. Groups are in constant competition to get releases up as fast as possible. First appearing around the time of Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes), The Scene is composed primarily of people dealing with and distributing media content, for which special skills and advanced software are required.

A bulletin board (pinboard, pin board, noticeboard, or notice board in British English) is a surface intended for the posting of messages, for example public ones may advertise items wanted or for sale, announce events, or provide information. Bulletin boards are often made of a material such as cork to facilitate addition and removal of messages, as well as a writing surface such as whiteboard or blackboard. A bulletin board which combines a pinboard (corkboard) and writing surface is known as a combination bulletin board. Bulletin boards can also be entirely in the digital domain and placed on computer networks so people can leave and erase messages for other people to read and see, as in a bulletin board system.

Bulletin boards are particularly prevalent at universities. They are used by many sports groups and extracurricular groups and anything from local shops to official notices. Dormitory corridors, well-trafficked hallways, lobbies, and freestanding kiosks often have cork boards attached to facilitate the posting of notices. At some universities, lampposts, bollards, trees, and walls often become impromptu posting sites in areas where official boards are sparse in number.

The SDS 940 was Scientific Data Systems' (SDS) first machine designed to directly support time-sharing. The 940 was based on the SDS 930's 24-bit CPU, with additional circuitry to provide protected memory and virtual memory.

It was announced in February 1966 and shipped in April, becoming a major part of Tymshare's expansion during the 1960s. The influential Stanford Research Institute "oN-Line System" (NLS) was demonstrated on the system. This machine was later used to run Community Memory, the first bulletin board system.