The First Social Network: It happened in 1991, San Francisco

Before Facebook. Before Twitter. Before the World Wide Web even existed. There was SF Net.In 1991, Wayne Gregori wired a handful of San Francisco coffeehouses together with coin-operated computer terminals, creating something the world had never seen - a public social network. Strangers typed messages to each other across the city, formed friendships, fell in love, and organized real-world gatherings, all for a quarter.From the gritty cafes of the Haight to the neon-lit corners of the Mission, SF Net became a community unlike anything before it. The regulars were goths, punks, poets, hackers, and dreamers - people who found connection in the glow of a green screen years before Silicon Valley turned "social networking" into a billion-dollar industry.The First Social Network is the memoir of the man who built it - a story of late nights soldering in a garage, raising kids between cafe rounds, navigating the chaos of 1990s San Francisco, and watching a homegrown experiment become a cultural phenomenon. It's a story about community, invention, and what happens when you give people a new way to talk to each other.It happened in 1991, San Francisco. Read more