Internet forum

An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes visible.

Forums have a specific set of jargon associated with them; e.g., a single conversation is called a "thread", or topic.

A discussion forum is hierarchical or tree-like in structure: a forum can contain a number of subforums, each of which may have several topics. Within a forum's topic, each new discussion started is called a thread, and can be replied to by as many people as so wish.

Depending on the forum's settings, users can be anonymous or have to register with the forum and then subsequently log in in order to post messages. On most forums, users do not have to log in to read existing messages.

Africa Online

Africa Online Holding Ltd., sometimes abbreviated to AFOL, is the largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Africa. Based in Nairobi, Kenya, it offers Internet access and operates in ten African countries, including Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Services provided by Africa Online include dial-up Internet access, leased line services, e-mail accounts, VSAT connectivity, DSL, WAN and VPN for private and business customers. In 2007 it has become a subsidiary of Telkom South Africa.

History

The company was started in 1994 by Ayisi Makatiani, Karanja Gakio and Amolo Ng'weno, three Kenyans who met each other while students in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Makatiani and Gakio were at MIT while Ng'weno was at Harvard. The basic idea for an online news service for Kenyans developed from an online community hosted at MIT called KenyaNet. KenyaNet was one of several Africa-focused online communities (the others were Okyeame in Ghana, Naijanet in Nigeria, and Salonet in Sierra Leone) formed and run by MIT students and hosted on MIT servers.