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I still can remember, that there was a technical hurdle to connect to the Usenet. My memory is from mid-nineties. You had to find the usenet server of your prov

I still can remember, that there was a technical hurdle to connect to the Usenet. My memory is from mid-nineties. You had to find the usenet server of your provider, which wasn't broadly pronounce, or even another one. This wasn't feasible for most people. Web forums worked in the browser.

myself248 4y ago
In most cases I remember, it was just [usenet|news|nntp].providername.tld Only if you couldn't find it after trying those, would you have to check the signup info you got from the ISP. Which also included their SMTP server, which, I mean... most customers also got email figured out just fine. I think the larger issue is that, if you didn't get your email working, life _sucked_, everyone expected you to have it. But if you didn't get usenet working, you were the only one who suffered and a lot of people didn't even know they were missing out. So the incentive to connect simply faded.
GekkePrutser 4y ago
The same was the case with everything else in those days. You had to set up winsock, set your POP3 and SMTP, SLIP/PPP etc. If you weren't technical you were just not on it or you had someone else set it up for you. We're talking mid-90s and Windows 95 made things a little better but it was still a mess because Microsoft thought they could make their own internet knockoff MSN a success. So they put much more effort into that at first. Thank God they were unsuccessful because the online world would have been even more commercial than it is now. Even now they're willing to risk the tiny market share of edge by spamming people with "special offers" Webmail was still pretty new and not fully functional. Usenet was just one of the many things to set up. I don't think this was the reason it didn't take off.