

BBSes with multiple phone lines often provide chat rooms, allowing users to interact with each other.

Many BBSes also offer online games in which users can compete with each other. In the early 1980s, message networks such as FidoNet sprung up to provide services such as NetMail, which is similar to email.

Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging messages with other users through public message boards and sometimes via direct chatting. A bulletin board system or BBS (also called Computer Bulletin Board Service, CBBS) is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program.
