R.I.P Usenet: 1980-2008

CorinneI writes "In a way inconceivable in today's marketplace, Usenet was where people once went to talk — in days before the profit-centric Internet we have today. The series of bulletin boards called 'newsgroups' shared by thousands of computers, which traded new messages several times a day, is now a thing of the past."

Comments

Re:Google Groups

[kisrael]

Thinking more about communities than questions (no one liked the folks just jumping in to get a question answered and not sticking around to be part of the group) -- It was pretty cool that you could reach such a wide range of communities and viewpoints through a single, user-chosen interface.

My school, Tufts, unceremoniously cut out Usenet a long while back (it was sad how under populated its own tufts.general group had gotten -- it's the whole "tough to compete with the web" thing writ small) and I never got around to going back, in part because of disliking every interface but Tin...