imo of course,but usenet had a hard time existing in a post-corporate internet exactly because it was difficult to wall off your users into your niche community

imo of course,but usenet had a hard time existing in a post-corporate internet exactly because it was difficult to wall off your users into your niche community, which became big in the early 90s and remains that way now. AOL/compuserve/prodigy/whatever offered easy to use and understand UXs which drew a large crowd, and their large crowd was in a fairly walled off portion of the internet using foreign protocols and systems -- so they drew in their friends and so on. same kinda thing fb does, among others, now. when the crowd/discussion moved elsewhere that was that. I think usenet saw a bit of a resurgence in popularity due to piracy, but the discussion has never really came back.