31–40 of 81 posts
Google in many ways helped sink USENET by acquiring Dejanews, then slowly replacing the USENET functionality with Google News. Dejanews, in hindsight could have been a pretty reasonable proto-social network on its own. Not that I'm bitter...
Part of the problem with Usenet is that it isn't "free" like Twitter and Facebook are. (They're free because they host ads, and there are all sorts of problems with that, of course, but you don't pay a monthly subscription to them). Way back, it used to be you got an NNTP server bundled with your ISP which was ok, because you were the only customer who knew what that was and how to use it, so you weren't creating a l…
In 1996, my local ISP ran Usenet on the beefiest PC-platform machine I had ever seen: a dual Pentium-II 400 with 128MB of RAM and 6 9GB SCSI disks. At times Usenet ate most of a T1 (that's a 1.5Mb/s pipe). So if you want Usenet, right now, every $5/month minimal VM that I'm aware of has more than enough CPU, RAM, disk and I/O to support you and two dozen friends, as long as you don't take binaries froups.
How much of that was due to alt.binaries.*?
Todays internet demographics and social media landscape though probably makes Eternal September pale into insignificance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just recently started looking back at one of the groups I frequently read years ago and found that there was a small community still using it. Even recognized a few of them. The trolls and spammers were gone.
Some are still going.. https://groups.google.com/u/1/g/sci.electronics.design https://groups.google.com/u/1/g/comp.arch https://groups.google.com/u/1/g/rec.arts.sf.written https://groups.google.com/u/1/g/rec.radio.amateur.misc https://groups.google.com/u/1/g/comp.compilers
Any of you archivers out there know whatever became of the Deja News Archive after Google bought it? https://www.wired.com/2001/02/google-buys-deja-archive/ This was integrated into Google seearch, it worked great for many years, and then it seems Google slowly chipped away at access to the archive and now it all but gone. I know about the various Usenet archives on archive.org (utzoo (rip), some CD usenet archive),…
Google literally embraced and extinguished it by first incorporating the message base into the web search, but apparently that wasn't enough, so they at first hid the "Discussions" search option, so that users had to enable it either by some search string fu or with 3rd party browser extensions, then killed it entirely. From that moment, a search that once would return links to people discussing X now would mostly return links to companies selling that X. The rest is history.
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-discussion-search-dead-1...
but the endless flood of spam was too much, along with the ever growing risk of "illegal content." Just became way too risky, ISPs started dropping it, and the spiral continued.
Part of the problem with Usenet is that it isn't "free" like Twitter and Facebook are. (They're free because they host ads, and there are all sorts of problems with that, of course, but you don't pay a monthly subscription to them). Way back, it used to be you got an NNTP server bundled with your ISP which was ok, because you were the only customer who knew what that was and how to use it, so you weren't creating a l…
In the UK, Demon Internet in the 90s maintained a usenet server for customers and one for non-customers (pubnews.demon.co.uk). They carried plenty, had decent retention, and were very well maintained. And busy too. Demon were the largest consumer ISP at the time IIRC. So, at least over here, what you say doesn’t match my recollections.
(I worked at Demon in 1998; if either news server went down I had to fix it if I could, or raise 3rd line expertise otherwise, 24/7)
Any of you archivers out there know whatever became of the Deja News Archive after Google bought it? https://www.wired.com/2001/02/google-buys-deja-archive/ This was integrated into Google seearch, it worked great for many years, and then it seems Google slowly chipped away at access to the archive and now it all but gone. I know about the various Usenet archives on archive.org (utzoo (rip), some CD usenet archive),…
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.drwho/search?q=before%3...
Anyone looking to create a new social network should certainly take cues from Usenet - of course, it was eventually over taken by forums on the web. Visiting Usenet today though will only lead to sadness, unless you're looking for something you shouldn't be or enjoy endless spam.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In 1996, my local ISP ran Usenet on the beefiest PC-platform machine I had ever seen: a dual Pentium-II 400 with 128MB of RAM and 6 9GB SCSI disks. At times Usenet ate most of a T1 (that's a 1.5Mb/s pipe). So if you want Usenet, right now, every $5/month minimal VM that I'm aware of has more than enough CPU, RAM, disk and I/O to support you and two dozen friends, as long as you don't take binaries froups.
> At times Usenet ate most of a T1 (that's a 1.5Mb/s pipe). How much of that was due to alt.binaries.*?