There may not have been web mail, but there was definitely email back in 1996, and it was used frequently in the 90's. Back then, I was on a lot of email discussion groups, which still exist today (many of the mailing lists were folded into Yahoo groups at one point or another). There were groups for all kinds of activities, and they were used instead of blogs and message boards. (The advantage of email? You could download it and read it offline, so you didn't have to pay for internet time.) So even if the "web" wasn't as active, there was a lot going on elsewhere. (When I got online, the web didn't exist - we were still using GOPHER. But still, there was a surprising amount of stuff online - you just had to look for it.) Karen