I posted about OnChat earlier this year. It was a graphical chatroom. There were multiple themed rooms, and you could create custom avatars (see link).

Anyway, it seems I just didn't look hard enough. Here is the link to the wayback machine, a reddit thread, and here's a screenshot of an example of the rooms.

It's such a shame. Ahh, the innocent days of chatrooms. I'm sure there were unsavoury people back then, but I really don't remember coming across any. I was hoping to track down some of the avatars on the avatar exchange page, but it seems the wayback machine didn't want to save the images.

Another website I used was one of the earliest social network sites: sixdegrees.com. Based on the theory that you are connected to everyone in the world through a chain of only six people, I guess this site's aim was to prove this. It was a little before its time, though, closing down in 2000. I don't remember using it much. I think I only ever messaged my sister on it.

I seem to remember this site being more orange. Guess I'm remembering it wrong.

Finally, a site I used quite a bit to send wind-up texts to my classmates in sixth form. It was called uboot.com, and it gave you a certain number of free text messages every day. That was handy as I was probably the only kid in my sixth form without a mobile. It has a German Wikipedia page, but no English.

I mostly used to use the nickpage, which acted like a wall. My sisters, cousins and I just mostly spammed each other with it.

There was also ezboard, where I used to spend my lunch hour during my sixth form years. There was this guy called HeavyMettle who got me into Final Fantasy, and this other guy called XS Ackman that I used to chat with, and his ex-girlfriend was always hanging around being jealous. Good times.

Oh gosh, no, I actually remember when I was 16, this guy on, I think it was Ackman's board (maybe?) used to try flirting with me, and so one day, my friend and I asked him to send a photo, and he was this proper middle-aged looking guy with a handlebar moustache. We laughed and noped our way out of there. Oh man, parts of ezboard were a real cesspit. I remember coming across neo-Nazis on what was meant to be a Formula 1 board.