Swatch Internet Time (or beat time) was a decimal time concept introduced in 1998 and marketed by the Swatch corporation as an alternative, decimal measure of time. One of the goals was to simplify the way people in different time zones communicate about time, mostly by eliminating time zones altogether. Swatch Internet Time was announced on October 23, 1998, in a ceremony at the Junior Summit '98, attended by Nicolas G.

Hayek, President and CEO of the Swatch Group, G.N. Hayek, President of Swatch Ltd., and Nicholas Negroponte, founder and then-director of the MIT Media Lab. During the Summit, Swatch Internet Time became the official time system for Nation1, an online country created and run by children. During 1999, Swatch produced several models of watch that displayed Swatch Internet Time as well as standard time, and even convinced a few websites (such as CNN.com) to use the new format.

The clock applet in the GNOME desktop can be set to display time in this manner. PHP's date() function has a format specifier 'B' which returns the Swatch Internet Time notation for a given time stamp. It is also used as a time reference on ICQ, and the online role-playing game Phantasy Star Online has used it since its launch on the Sega Dreamcast in 2000 to try to facilitate cross-continent gaming (as the game allowed Japanese, American and European players to mingle on the same servers).

In March 2001, Ericsson released the T20e, a mobile phone which gave the user the option of displaying Internet Time. Outside these areas, however, it appears to be infrequently used.

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