It's not just that, but in 1997-98 for me living in Yugoslavia, my main online channels were still primarily usenet groups and irc servers and even some BBS-es

It's not just that, but in 1997-98 for me living in Yugoslavia, my main online channels were still primarily usenet groups and irc servers and even some BBS-es still operating - it was for us as big deal as social networks are now. Just a few years later we all were on forums and icq/msn, and protocols like usenet and gopher became funny words new kids going online never heard of. It was a huge shift that happened world-wide, wasn't anything specific to YU. And yes, incredible amounts of historical data got lost in that transition.