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This essay revisits the online defense that took place in LinguaMOO in July 1995, tying it to theories and current practice of social media. In doing so, it situates MOOs in a historical, cultural context as an early form of participatory media related to social media environments prevalent today and establishes that popular social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, are not new but, rather, are part of an evolution of technologies that foster the human impetus to connect with one another across any mode of communication.

This paper discusses five exhibitions curated by the author of what might be most broadly termed network-based art: Beyond Interface: net art and art on the net (1998), Art Entertainment Network (2000), Telematic Connections: The Virtual Embrace (2001), Open_Source_Art_Hack (2002), and Translocations (2003). While they took place after the invention of the http protocol, they represent an inflection point prior to the commodification of the technology of social media culture and explore formative practices by artists and institutions for current recensions of social media.

System X was an Australian-based dial up BBS, where users created a community of interest with both a variety of text-based conversations and a virtual gallery of images and sound that invited visual and sound artists and musicians to share work and collaborate. System X also sought to originate critical thought about information storage and control, data networks, and art practice in this media. Importantly, it provided a context for community members to upload their own content and to share that content not only with a Sydney-based community, but also with the growing international community. In an interview with Founding Sysop Scot McPhee, this chapter documents the roots of System X in the Sydney electronic music community; System X's role as an art project; the importance of uploading, downloading, manipulating and re-uploading music and images; the user community; the audience; and System X's legacy in the Australian digital arts community.

The history of social media has been marked by arguments over two central issues: markers of identity and degrees of participation. The battle over identity has largely focused on the legitimacy of experimenting with personal and social identity through pseudonymous ‘avatars’. The argument over agency has centered on whether participants should be tightly corralled or given full programming power to change the structures of social media itself. These issues are linked through widespread distrust of pseudonymous agency and the suspicion -- fueled by recent controversies over ‘trolling’ -- that people will tend to participate disruptively, and that such disruptions are necessarily problematic. In this chapter, the author argues for a different view, suggesting that artists have led the way in demonstrating the creative potential of pseudonymous agency in social media. Among the fruits of deep participation in social media are new ways of telling stories, understanding identity itself, and engaging with improvisation as a central rather than peripheral creative activity.

The Minitel (French videotex system) is often considered as a “pre-Internet” platform and the art that was created with it as belonging to “network art” and/or “collaborative” practices on a “social media” avant la lettre. In which respect is this true? This article provides an initial map and a typology of minitel-based creative practice by identifying works and documenting its context as it happened in France, compared to other countries. With detailed descriptions of selected works and of the ART ACCES online magazine-gallery project, it proposes an analysis that will be compared to and confront net art, new media art, and current trends in e-publishing.

Initiated by Carl Loeffler, Director of the San Francisco artspace La Mamelle/Art Com, who had been working on artists' telecommunications projects since the 1977 Send/Receive Project, Art Com Electronic Network (ACEN) was implemented on The WELL by artist Fred Truck in the Spring of 1986. Loeffler's vision was to create an online environment for contemporary art that included electronic publication of art journals; an art-centered conferencing system; and interactive publication of computer-mediated artworks and electronic literature. How Loeffler and Truck began a collaboration that resulted in an historic social media platform; how ACEN brought artists online; published text art and electronic literature, including John Cage‘s First Meeting of the Satie Society and Judy Malloy's Uncle Roger; and mounted a travelling exhibition of artists software, is detailed in this interview with Fred Truck -- with the participation of Anna Couey, who began editing Art Com Magazine online in 1990.

Cultures in Cyberspace was a temporary communications network organized by the author in 1992 to connect five culturally diverse online communities in conversation: American Indian Telecommunications/Dakota BBS (US), Arts Wire (US), ArtsNet (Australia), the WELL (US), and Usenet (international). Produced at a time of impending transformational technological change, the project provided a platform for people to participate in co-creating cyberspace, bringing their cultural backgrounds, stories and histories to the table. Cultures in Cyberspace was based on the premise that social, political and cultural meanings are made possible or not depending on who is connected to whom and the forms of communication that are supported and prioritized. The chapter discusses the art practices and socio-political context that informed the project, as well as its concept, design, implementation, and content. It includes participants' contemporary reflections on questions raised by the project.

For a decade before the Internet, members of the literary performance group Invisible Seattle pioneered the delights of creativity in social media on their Bulletin Board System (BBS) IN.S.OMNIA. The invisibles conducted a series of rigorous (and often hilarious) literary experiments, asking whether or not this disembodied text could support complex fictions, prose and poetry modes, as well as philosophic inquiry, exploring in microcosm the multi-vocal modes now common. The Invisibles discussed writing practices freed from paper-and-ink with writers such as Jacques Derrida and Harry Mathews. The essay captures the song of the modem -- the flavor of collaboration on the BBS platform -- and connects IN.S.OMNIA to netprov (networked improv narrative) and other contemporary practices.