Starbright World — a social network before social networks

Starbright World began in 1995 as a pioneering 3D virtual world linking children at four hospitals over a private broadband network. Intel supplied ProShare-enabled PCs for patient-to-patient video and voice, Sprint provided the network, and Worlds Inc. created the original virtual environment.

By 1998, Starbright World had evolved into a private social network with message boards, chat rooms, videoconferencing, games, profiles, and educational content. Our work at Digital Evolution belonged to that next chapter—still years before Facebook and before social networking had a common product language.

There were no mature messaging platforms, video-conferencing services, cloud APIs, or established frameworks for building online communities. Almost everything had to be assembled or invented from scratch.

Working with Dave Hecker, Howard Spector, Vu Pham, Tommy Wong, and James Tolentino, we combined communication, identity, education, play, and moderation into a single experience designed specifically for children facing serious illnesses.

Unlike many commercial projects, success was not measured by sales or engagement metrics. Every design decision asked a different question: would this make a child feel a little less alone?

The interface intentionally avoided anything intimidating or clinical. Soft colors, friendly illustrations, gentle transitions, rounded shapes, and warm interactions created an environment that felt calm and welcoming.

Tommy Wong designed the overall product experience, and James Tolentino designed the interface screens. Vu and I painstakingly implemented what they envisioned, paying close attention to animation, screen transitions, and interaction quality.

The emotional character of the product was not decoration. It was fundamental to making the experience kid-friendly and giving children a sense of belonging.

One of the most exciting parts of the project was live video. At the time, almost nobody had this capability.

Only a few companies possessed practical desktop videoconferencing technology. We made a special arrangement with Intel to get access to its ProShare Conferencing Video System 200, and Intel provided cameras that we installed throughout the office.

I still remember Vu running to the third floor of our Brentwood office while I called him upstairs from my desk. Today that sounds completely ordinary. Back then, seeing live video appear across the building felt like magic.

We spent countless late nights debugging ProShare, building the chat protocol, designing screen transitions, and making the experience reliable enough for children who depended on it.

The implementation reflected a transitional period in the web. No single technology could deliver the entire experience, so we combined server-rendered pages, desktop multimedia, custom real-time networking, and specialized video hardware.

Looking back, it is striking how much product capability we assembled before modern JavaScript frameworks, WebSockets, cloud infrastructure, or browser-native real-time communications existed.

One interaction still makes me smile. I suggested a navigation experience where softly rotating 3D bubbles floated across the screen, each representing a different part of the application. When a child selected one, the content would gracefully slide in from the side—an idea Jason later helped evolve into the final interaction.

It was not animation for its own sake. The slow movement gave the interface a sense of calm, curiosity, and playfulness. That emotional quality mattered as much as the mechanics of navigation.

One afternoon Howard took Vu and me to UCLA Medical Center to watch children in the oncology department use the system we had spent months building.

Until then, it had still felt like a software project. Watching hospitalized children connect with one another through something we had created completely changed how I thought about technology.

That visit left an impression that never faded. It showed me that software is not just code. Sometimes it is companionship. Sometimes it is reassurance. Sometimes it simply helps someone feel less alone.

As we were finishing the project, several celebrities recorded voiceovers for audio portions of the experience. One of them was Melissa Joan Hart, then starring as Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

Howard asked her to record one extra message for me as one of the project’s lead engineers: “Berk is the greatest!” It is a tiny keepsake from nearly thirty years ago. I still have the recording, and it still makes me smile.

When I joined Digital Evolution, I expected to build websites. Instead, I found myself helping build one of the earliest online communities for children with serious illnesses.

Nearly three decades later, when I began building healthcare products again—including Triangle Health—that afternoon at UCLA immediately came back to me. Healthcare was not an abrupt pivot. In an important way, it was a return.

After transportation platforms, mapping systems, developer infrastructure, AI agents, and healthcare products, I can still trace one continuous thread back to Starbright World: use technology to reduce isolation, create connection, and improve people’s lives. The tools have changed dramatically. The purpose has not.