101 Online: American Minitel Network and Lessons from Its Failure

In an effort to replicate its experience with Minitel, the first successful mass-market digital information-distribution ecosystem, in 1991 France Telecom launched 101 Online in San Francisco. 101 Online was as massive a failure as Minitel had been a success. This article reveals the previously undocumented history of the 101 Online ecosystem and suggests reasons why it failed where Minitel had succeeded.