While there certainly have been changes to Internet usage patterns, I think all experiences are still possible. In the early 90's when this mother's group was t

While there certainly have been changes to Internet usage patterns, I think all experiences are still possible. In the early 90's when this mother's group was taking off, my usage of Usenet wasn't very social, it was more like the image boards of today--downloading content and running uumerge if you know about that. Later in the 00's, I got into Wordpress blogging and found some nice communities, as well as created my own. (And I suspect this submission is related to the interesting mommy-blogging submission the other day). I also got on Facebook and reconnected with high school and college acquaintances, but like others here, I mostly restrict fb to people I know personally, so it's not a discovery of new social circles (and I find I don't have much n common with those people but it's nice to share news now and then). I think my most social online communities have come through forums starting in the 00's and continuing to now. HN is a big one for me obviously, but also some local area forums. I moved away from family and friends during this time, and through local forums, I connected with people near me that I didn't know previously. Oddly, even though they were local and we did have a few meet-ups, our connections and discussions online were much stronger. But the closest experience I've had to the international connections of this mother's group has been in the past 2 years through Instagram. I started posting only photos of a niche hobby, and by using and searching for specific hashtags (once I found them), I connected to others doing the same. And they are all over the world, US, Europe, Austalia--mostly English-speaking but not all. I mean, when was the last time you connected with someone from Luxembourg (and I actually once knew friends in Luxembourg but I never communicate with them any more). Granted these Instagram connections aren't as deep as with the mothers group, but through likes and comments we support each other's work and help out with tips and advice. All that to say it's not about the tools, it's how you use them. The key is I use my Instagram account only for this hobby and only to view, search, and post related images and comments. So all my followers and following are related and only in this one community. I do actually browse/consume other topics on Instagram (pretty travel pictures for example), but I do that with bookmarks in a browser, not in the app with my timeline and following.