Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web in 1989, building on earlier work developing hypertext. Ray Tomlinson created email in 1972 by introducing the '@' symbol to distinguish sender and network names in addresses. The first spam email was sent in 1978. MUDs and Usenet predated the web as online forums, while the Internet Worm of 1988 and early commercial internet providers in 1989 helped grow the network.