2 ms·
> 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
by 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 agoMT-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 agoWeb 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.