eWorld

AppleLink had initially been available only to dealers when it launched in 1985, but was later opened to developers and became the de facto internal e-mail service within Apple.

Before the advent of eWorld, Apple had started a consumer-oriented online support service known as AppleLink Personal Edition.

Apple received a 10% royalty for all the system's users while Quantum generated revenue by running the service.

That, coupled with Apple's strict design guidelines, caused Quantum to eventually terminate their contract.

The group licensed the original AppleLink Personal Edition software from AOL and developed it into what would be known as eWorld.

According to an AOL press release on January 5, 1994, eWorld was "created using technology licensed from America Online.

"[3] On January 5, 1994, Apple announced eWorld at the 1994 Macworld Conference & Expo, where they invited attendees to become beta testers for the service.

Several Mac software and hardware companies opened up virtual forums on the service to provide customer support and general product information to subscribers.

The main eWorld portal also encompassed a wide variety of news and information services.

The browser had features for FTP uploading, web images and settings to configure a default homepage address.

Apple was in a challenging financial position at the time and CEO Michael Spindler told the Online Services Group that significant marketing for the service could not be provided so eWorld shipped on new Macs with only an icon on the desktop and a brochure in the box.

Apple's management decided that the product was doomed to fail in a market where AOL had such a commanding lead.

Remaining eWorld subscribers were offered incentives to switch to AOL, which had already been hosting Macintosh-oriented content within the Mac Forums of its Computing Channel.

Peter Friedman eventually formed chat community website TalkCity with Chris Christensen and Jenna Woodul.

Richard Gingras and Jonathan Rosenberg joined the newly formed broadband access venture @Home Network.