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I don’t think that’s what killed Usenet. What killed it was UI. It took substantial effort to get set up so you could participate. It really thrived in the era

I don’t think that’s what killed Usenet. What killed it was UI. It took substantial effort to get set up so you could participate. It really thrived in the era of multi-user systems where a professional could handle that for you. Once direct connections from PCs became the norm, most people couldn’t be bothered. It could have been saved with a good web interface, but almost everybody working on web-based messaging preferred to create their own platform instead, probably because it’s a lot more fun and profitable to build your own community than it is to build a portal to one that’s already there. As always, but even more than usual, this is just my opinion and I could be wrong.

pmoriarty 8y ago
"I don’t think that’s what killed Usenet. What killed it was UI." Nah. It wasn't the UI. It was developers and corporations chasing the new shiny, which was the web. Any UI could have been built on top of Usenet, but instead everyone jumped ship and on to the web bandwagon. Usenet also had a big spam problem, but one which was not insurmountable, as Gmail and other web mail providers have proven. Modern anti-spam solutions could just as easily be applied to Usenet to keep it as spam-free as most web mail is today. Of course, now there is the lack of historical knowledge, as another poster alluded to elsewhere in the thread, but there's also a contempt for the average user, and a widespread belief that UI's have to be dumbed down for the average user. Web UIs could be just as powerful as Usenet was, but corporations such as Google, Reddit, and Facebook choose to cater to the lowest common denominator rather than to power users. Also, unlike Usenet, with these corporate walled gardens, alternate UI's for them are rare. At least Reddit has an API, so at least there there's a potential for some powerful alternative UIs built around it, but the ones that I know of are still a pale shadow of Usenet clients from 30 years ago.
- ams6110 8y ago
  Netscape Communicator included a newsgroup interface that was just as usable as email. I don't know if that has survived into modern Thunderbird.
  - interfixus 8y ago
    It has indeed. I can read all the Usenet I want in my Thunderbird. Provided, of course, that I have a provider, and can find something still worth subscribing to.
    - u801e 8y ago
      There are a number of free providers out there. eternal-september.org is one that provides access to the text only newsgroups.
- kalleboo 8y ago
  Usenet was already dead by the time "corporations" like Facebook and Twitter came on the scene. What killed it was UBB/vBulletin/phpBB web forums. People who ran blogs with some traffic installed them for their community, it was easy for people to just click in and get started, and then you ended up with huge communities like gamefaqs and Something Awful (and car forums, collector's forums, etc etc). These then generated lots of content, which showed up in web search results. Then web forums in turn got killed by social media (twitter/tumblr/facebook) and reddit and withdrew to a niche.
  - disconcision 8y ago
    something i've never been quite clear on: were web forums killed, or merely eclipsed? social media brought many more people online; the demographics changed, by orders of magnitude. certainly the old stalwarts you mentioned have dwindled (though are still active), but while doing searches i will still run into active webforums on speciality topics; perhaps ironically i feel these are more likely for non-tech topics
    - kalleboo 8y ago
      I agree that forums aren't "dead" - there's tones of very active forums in all kinds of niches. I meant more in the way that they're no longer where the largest growth is.
    - flashman 8y ago
      I ran the kind of mid-sized forum that catered to an active community of posters and a casual community that showed up for topic-related content (i.e. from search engines). But because most of what we were sharing was either links to news elsewhere, or shitposts, there was no reason to keep using the forum once Twitter went mainstream. I think this was probably the case for many similar communities. If you are utterly massive, your forum is probably still alive.
u801e 8y ago
> Once direct connections from PCs became the norm, most people couldn’t be bothered. I started participating in groups on usenet in the late '90s. There were a substantial number of posters in the groups I lurked in or participated in. > It could have been saved with a good web interface From the mid '90s through the late 2000s, most people that I knew didn't look for a web application for everything they wanted to do online. They used various applications like mail and news readers, IRC clients, FTP applications, etc. In other words, they looked for desktop applications. Web applications weren't really a thing at the time.
- angry_octet 8y ago
  MT-Newswatcher has a far more usable interface than google groups, Reddit etc. Eudora ruled Mac email for a long time. Important at the time was that reading news occured from a local NNTP cache, and hence was fast (still 56k last mile). WAN internet was often slow, and browser UIs sucked. If you had a Unix box at home you could even cache overnight or during the day when no one was using the phone line, and your replies queued for when you went online. NN was arguably the first 'groupware', we had patches from CVS going to news (& email gateway), build and test reports, threaded discussions, etc. Fast searching of the entire archive. Way more useful than Slack. Skype Business is barely better than ytalk + fingerd. It seems we've barely moved in functionality since then.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Web forums were around and huge by the late 90s. I don’t think people really consider those to be “web applications.” In any case, being able to click a link and get started with no friction is a big advantage.
lazyjones 8y ago
The setup effort was no more than setting up WhatsApp today. You downloaded a client and chose a few groups to participate in. Some browsers even had clients built in.
tinus_hn 8y ago
You could use Usenet from the web, Dejanews has been around just about forever.
type0 8y ago
Usenet died with Eternal September! RIP

pmoriarty 8y ago

"I don’t think that’s what killed Usenet. What killed it was UI." Nah. It wasn't the UI. It was developers and corporations chasing the new shiny, which was the web. Any UI could have been built on top of Usenet, but instead everyone jumped ship and on to the web bandwagon. Usenet also had a big spam problem, but one which was not insurmountable, as Gmail and other web mail providers have proven. Modern anti-spam solutions could just as easily be applied to Usenet to keep it as spam-free as most web mail is today. Of course, now there is the lack of historical knowledge, as another poster alluded to elsewhere in the thread, but there's also a contempt for the average user, and a widespread belief that UI's have to be dumbed down for the average user. Web UIs could be just as powerful as Usenet was, but corporations such as Google, Reddit, and Facebook choose to cater to the lowest common denominator rather than to power users. Also, unlike Usenet, with these corporate walled gardens, alternate UI's for them are rare. At least Reddit has an API, so at least there there's a potential for some powerful alternative UIs built around it, but the ones that I know of are still a pale shadow of Usenet clients from 30 years ago.

ams6110 8y ago
Netscape Communicator included a newsgroup interface that was just as usable as email. I don't know if that has survived into modern Thunderbird.
- interfixus 8y ago
  It has indeed. I can read all the Usenet I want in my Thunderbird. Provided, of course, that I have a provider, and can find something still worth subscribing to.
  - u801e 8y ago
    There are a number of free providers out there. eternal-september.org is one that provides access to the text only newsgroups.
kalleboo 8y ago
Usenet was already dead by the time "corporations" like Facebook and Twitter came on the scene. What killed it was UBB/vBulletin/phpBB web forums. People who ran blogs with some traffic installed them for their community, it was easy for people to just click in and get started, and then you ended up with huge communities like gamefaqs and Something Awful (and car forums, collector's forums, etc etc). These then generated lots of content, which showed up in web search results. Then web forums in turn got killed by social media (twitter/tumblr/facebook) and reddit and withdrew to a niche.
- disconcision 8y ago
  something i've never been quite clear on: were web forums killed, or merely eclipsed? social media brought many more people online; the demographics changed, by orders of magnitude. certainly the old stalwarts you mentioned have dwindled (though are still active), but while doing searches i will still run into active webforums on speciality topics; perhaps ironically i feel these are more likely for non-tech topics
  - kalleboo 8y ago
    I agree that forums aren't "dead" - there's tones of very active forums in all kinds of niches. I meant more in the way that they're no longer where the largest growth is.
  - flashman 8y ago
    I ran the kind of mid-sized forum that catered to an active community of posters and a casual community that showed up for topic-related content (i.e. from search engines). But because most of what we were sharing was either links to news elsewhere, or shitposts, there was no reason to keep using the forum once Twitter went mainstream. I think this was probably the case for many similar communities. If you are utterly massive, your forum is probably still alive.

u801e 8y ago

> Once direct connections from PCs became the norm, most people couldn’t be bothered. I started participating in groups on usenet in the late '90s. There were a substantial number of posters in the groups I lurked in or participated in. > It could have been saved with a good web interface From the mid '90s through the late 2000s, most people that I knew didn't look for a web application for everything they wanted to do online. They used various applications like mail and news readers, IRC clients, FTP applications, etc. In other words, they looked for desktop applications. Web applications weren't really a thing at the time.

angry_octet 8y ago
MT-Newswatcher has a far more usable interface than google groups, Reddit etc. Eudora ruled Mac email for a long time. Important at the time was that reading news occured from a local NNTP cache, and hence was fast (still 56k last mile). WAN internet was often slow, and browser UIs sucked. If you had a Unix box at home you could even cache overnight or during the day when no one was using the phone line, and your replies queued for when you went online. NN was arguably the first 'groupware', we had patches from CVS going to news (& email gateway), build and test reports, threaded discussions, etc. Fast searching of the entire archive. Way more useful than Slack. Skype Business is barely better than ytalk + fingerd. It seems we've barely moved in functionality since then.
mikeash 8y ago
Web forums were around and huge by the late 90s. I don’t think people really consider those to be “web applications.” In any case, being able to click a link and get started with no friction is a big advantage.

lazyjones 8y ago

The setup effort was no more than setting up WhatsApp today. You downloaded a client and chose a few groups to participate in. Some browsers even had clients built in.

tinus_hn 8y ago

You could use Usenet from the web, Dejanews has been around just about forever.

type0 8y ago

Usenet died with Eternal September! RIP