alt Hacker NewsThe FirstClass BBS software itself was something I'd found extremely interesting back in the nearly pre-Internet days.
Single dialup connection, multiple virtual connections over that serial connection (you could open multiple Windows in the client and have them all updating), non-blocking communications (did some nasty stuff in the client to give a progress bar in the title bar of each window as the contents would load), object database on the server based on the Mac's filesystem (took advantage of file system IDs mapped to folders, files, etc. - copying your server to another drive was a nightmare).
It was almost like a remote, multi-user Finder for Macs. Unfortunately it never transitioned to the Internet well - the license cost for the server software was cost prohibitive for most hobbyists once discussion forum software started showing up everywhere back in the day.
Really neat technology at the time though, and inspired some early communications work of mine before the Internet became ubiquitous.
What was your FirstClass server / where was it? Mine was used by a large-ish (2.5k people at peak) Macintosh User Group in Canada.
It was definitely formative - I still have friends from back then, and remember logging on daily.
As you say, the transition to the real Internet and web was painful/slow for them, and obviously being a commercial software made it especially hard. The software and the user group all disappeared around the same time - hard to say which came first.