Second Sight (BBS software)

Second Sight was a commercial bulletin board system (BBS) program written by Scott Watson for the Apple Macintosh. It was the second program from Watson, the first being the Red Ryder terminal emulator. When first released it was known as Red Ryder Host, later becoming White Knight, and finally Second Sight. Second Sight was a traditional text-based BBS system, unlike products like TeleFinder and FirstClass which supported a graphical interface.

Next, Watson came up with a program for anyone to create a BBS. It was called Red Ryder Host, but later renamed Second Sight. Scott introduced the new program in the same way as Red Ryder, by posting it on bulletin boards. By then, Watson operated his own bulletin board. Anyone could order directly from him.

Watson explained how his marketing evolved:

"Bulletin boards help distribution. Our store sales tripled in three years since going into stores. There has been a switch-over. As volume increased (with no overhead increase), our cost per disk dropped.

"At the end of our third year selling to the trade, we began to sell through a distributor, Ingram-Micro D. At the same time we started to advertise. We began to run for six months a full-page ad in three Mac magazines. As soon as the ads started, we had a big burst of sales."