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I’d add barriers of entry. Not high, but way higher that anything that is publicly readable on the internet and therefore indexed on Google. I can discover int

I’d add barriers of entry. Not high, but way higher that anything that is publicly readable on the internet and therefore indexed on Google. I can discover interesting subreddits by pure chance by following a google search on a question I have. Or following a link on a blog There’s no chance of that happening on Usenet. For most users, search/discovery is a web thing (web search, links) and there’s no link from the web to usenet. Therefore if you don't know anything interesting on usenet you can't easily discover it. Any interesting post/discussion cannot be simply linked on a tweet (or, for that matters, on IRC). Usenet is completely insular. A web forum is not. Were I a Usenet enthusiast, that would be my 1st priority. Public archives of most important hierarchies (comp.* for example), indexed on Google, easily linkable.

jghn 3y ago
When I first started using usenet in the early 90s, I spent days going through the entire list of newsgroups my provider had. IIRC it was somewhere around 6000 groups at the time. Found all sorts of interesting things that way. To your point, that's not exactly a scalable solution and not one that most people would do :) I'd counter that though with the aspect of one stop shopping, which e.g. Reddit also has. One thing that kept me on Usenet far longer than most was that with one app (my newsreader) I could access limitless topic specific forums. Instead of having to go to a bunch of different sites, each with their own logins & quirks, etc. To this day I still prefer applications like that, for instance it is something I really appreciated about Twitter until recent changes.
shadowgovt 3y ago
One of the reasons HTTP ate the world is simply the fact that everyone already has a user interface program installed to use an HTTP-vended service. In this day and age, that need to install one more thing (unless you're on mobile) is itself a huge barrier to entry.
u801e 3y ago
> I can discover interesting subreddits by pure chance by following a google search on a question I have. Or following a link on a blog > There’s no chance of that happening on Usenet. You could the list of newsgroups for phrases that could lead you to an interesting group. Other times, someone in the group may mention the other group if you mention your interest in a comment. At least, that's how I found a lot of different newsgroups when I was regularly reading and posting to usenet.

jghn 3y ago

When I first started using usenet in the early 90s, I spent days going through the entire list of newsgroups my provider had. IIRC it was somewhere around 6000 groups at the time. Found all sorts of interesting things that way. To your point, that's not exactly a scalable solution and not one that most people would do :) I'd counter that though with the aspect of one stop shopping, which e.g. Reddit also has. One thing that kept me on Usenet far longer than most was that with one app (my newsreader) I could access limitless topic specific forums. Instead of having to go to a bunch of different sites, each with their own logins & quirks, etc. To this day I still prefer applications like that, for instance it is something I really appreciated about Twitter until recent changes.

shadowgovt 3y ago

One of the reasons HTTP ate the world is simply the fact that everyone already has a user interface program installed to use an HTTP-vended service. In this day and age, that need to install one more thing (unless you're on mobile) is itself a huge barrier to entry.

u801e 3y ago

> I can discover interesting subreddits by pure chance by following a google search on a question I have. Or following a link on a blog > There’s no chance of that happening on Usenet. You could the list of newsgroups for phrases that could lead you to an interesting group. Other times, someone in the group may mention the other group if you mention your interest in a comment. At least, that's how I found a lot of different newsgroups when I was regularly reading and posting to usenet.