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In the early 1990s, CompuServe was enormously popular, with hundreds of thousands of users visiting its thousands of moderated Forums, forerunners to the endless variety of discussion sites on the [[WWW|Web]] today. (Like the Web, many Forums were managed by independent producers who then administered the Forum and recruited moderators, called "[[SysOp|sysops]]".) Among these were many in which [[computer hardware|hardware]] and [[software]] companies offered [[customer support]]. This broadened the audience from primarily [[business]] users to the technical "[[geek]]" crowd, some of which migrated over from ''[[Byte Magazine]]'''s [[Byte Information Exchange|Bix online service]].
Over time, CompuServe also attracted the general public with a wide spectrum of Forums devoted to interests such as show business, including Entertainment Drive, CompuServe's sole content investment, current events, sports, politics, [[Aviation Special Interest Group|aviation]], and more. In 1992, CompuServe and Eliot Stein's ShowBiz Forum hosted the industry's first electronic movie press kit, for the Universal computer-themed feature film ''[[Sneakers (1992 film)|Sneakers]]''; the film's director, [[Phil Alden Robinson]], participated in online chats with ShowBiz Forum members to promote the picture.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/risks/13.79.html|title=The Risks Digest Volume 13: Issue 79|work=The Risks Digest|accessdate=26 May 2015}}</ref>
Unlike AOL (and before they merged), in the early 1990s CompuServe aggressively recruited membership even from peripheral groups which had the potential to attract followings, offering moderators free access to the network as an incentive. One such group was Military Brats of America, an organization of individuals who were raised in the US military. MBA received an unsolicited invitation to join CompuServe at no cost, including universal free access for its founder. CompuServe set up a dedicated bulletin board for MBA which became central to the group’s daily operation. To access the discussions, MBA members were required to join the network as paying customers. This was in contrast to AOL, which repeatedly denied MBA a dedicated bulletin board, and offered no free access to any MBA member. As a work around, MBA was able to establish a subsidiary bulletin board within the Vietnam Veterans of America AOL portal, thereby piggybacking with a more established group which did enjoy preferred AOL treatment. In that way MBA had a jerry rigged presence on the AOL website, but no preferential benefits. All MBA members, including the group’s leader, paid full AOL membership rates to access the VVA/MBA AOL community.{{Citation needed|date=February 2015}}
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