The digital landscape of 1987 feels quaint by today’s standards, but the arrival and expansion of Bulletin Board Services (BBS) marked a genuinely new chapter in networked communication. For analysts and policymakers looking to chart the rise of BBSs within economic statistics, ISIC 6201—computer programming activities—serves as a statistical anchor. Yet, as is often the case with technological frontiers, this code offers breadth but not fine detail; most BBSs were small, sometimes homegrown operations, hiding among a much wider universe of software firms and digital experimenters.
The first step in any serious effort to track early BBS operators is to construct a list of ISIC 6201-registered entities active in 1987. In the United States, this would capture a large and diverse pool: established software companies, local IT consultancies, educational providers, and, buried within, a handful of firms or partnerships experimenting with digital communication platforms. Filtering this list for true BBS activity requires turning to contemporaneous directories, early online magazines, and the still-archived mailing lists of the era—places where BBS operators advertised their existence or exchanged technical advice.
A valuable resource is the handful of trade publications and hobbyist newsletters that chronicled the BBS scene. Publications like Boardwatch Magazine listed operating BBSs by city, included phone numbers (often a badge of honor), and sometimes brief details on system software, user capacity, or unique features. Cross-referencing these directories with ISIC 6201 registries can produce a tentative map of formal BBS operators—though many ran informally, outside the bounds of corporate registration.
Another step is to examine business filings for software firms offering BBS system software or commercial hosting solutions. Some companies pivoted to offer installation, support, or even remote hosting as demand grew. Tracking product launch announcements, conference presentations, or reviews in digital press can further clarify which entities were driving the BBS wave as a business, not just as a hobby.
To correlate BBS user growth with modem sales data is both logical and, inevitably, imprecise. The two metrics moved together: as more users acquired modems—either for home use or through work or school—BBS participation expanded. Modem sales figures, available from hardware manufacturers’ annual reports or aggregated in industry analyst studies, provide a useful baseline. By overlaying modem sales curves with counts of registered BBSs (from trade directories or listings in national computer magazines), analysts can infer growth rates and estimate the spread of digital literacy at a community level.
Of course, there are confounding factors. Some modems were bought for other uses—remote data collection, business communications, or even early online banking. Conversely, some BBS users accessed systems via shared hardware or from public terminals, especially in schools or libraries. Documentation of assumptions about user-to-hardware ratios, system churn, and regional disparities is critical to interpreting the numbers.
Finally, attention should be paid to qualitative signals: stories of local BBS communities forming, the appearance of niche systems (for games, job listings, or technical support), or news of first-time events—meetups, conventions, and system operator groups. These developments, while not always quantifiable, marked the transformation of BBS from a technical experiment into a recognizable, if still fledgling, industry.
The resulting portrait is patchy and occasionally ambiguous, but by layering ISIC 6201 firm data with trade listings and hardware sales, analysts can recover the outlines of BBS emergence. What’s most remarkable, in retrospect, is how quickly a subculture became an economic sector—one dial tone, and one system operator, at a time.