WOW! first. I know because we had it, and for that reason alone. Before WOW! we would do the X hour free trials of ISPs and that's all the internet we had.

WOW! first. I know because we had it, and for that reason alone. Before WOW! we would do the X hour free trials of ISPs and that's all the internet we had. AOL followed less than a year later, and we switched to AOL only then because of AIM and their walled garden (talking pre-Netscape) was better. WOW! was fairly poorly advertised. We originally got it via a free CD at a store (Barnes and Noble or Office Max?), and they started doing TV advertisements a few months later. Though almost immediately thereafter AOL started their giant Unlimited Hours advertising blitz. Marketing truly won in that scenario. CompuServe had a shot, but no one knew about WOW! so it died in obscurity and under the weight of AOL's genuinely gargantuan marketing efforts.