Because the dialog seems very similar, although there weren't companies built around these discussions then, and now the valuations of companies fostering these conversations are astronomical. - Chris White
All of Usenet in 1995 was estimated to have 18 million users (http://www.tlsoft.com/arbitron...). Facebook alone now claims 80 million active users (http://www.facebook.com/press/...), and there are an estimated 1.4 *billion* Internet users in the world (http://www.internetworldstats....). This numerical growth alone would justify increased commercial attention, especially combined with the vastly greater monetization tools now available. - ⓞnor
But @nor, we could be arguing in the same way on Usenet. Is scale the only difference? - Chris White
Deja News was founded in 1995 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...), so you're actually wrong that there weren't companies build around these discussions at the time. Before then, the numbers were even smaller, and it wasn't much earlier that there were pretty strict restrictions on commercial activity on major Internet backbones (NSFnet, etc). - ⓞnor
Also, don't forget the commercial online services -- CompuServe, the original AOL, Prodigy and so on. A large part of what they sold was access to "bulletin boards". So I think online conversation has been a center of commercial activity for as long as there have been online conversation. - ⓞnor
Okay, I was wrong regarding the actual date of commercialization. I think my point is still interesting regarding the sameness of the experience. BTW, I felt the same about the commercialization of chat by AOL. I was surprised that people were so excited about something we had all been using for years. If FF allowed me to edit, I would change 1995 to 1983, which is when I started using the Internet. - Chris White
I think most of the evolution of online social networking is a response to these very important scale changes. Usenet is a ghost town because a global topic hierarchy doesn't scale to a billion users. Instead, people flock to friend-link communities - Groups, Facebook, Friendfeed, and everything in between. The experience of two people arguing on the net hasn't changed much and may never change, but the way you find people and topics and an audience has changed quite a bit. - ⓞnor
CompuServe was founded in 1969, and marketed directly to consumers as early as 1979. But yes, the date of commercialization is not so important. An interesting question is whether you think there are important changes that could be made. You seem to be saying that we're basically in a rut; do you have any suggestions for what would lie outside the rut? (Not "virtual reality", surely.) - ⓞnor
Louis: Arguments the same, but finding people to argue with has improved. :) - Chris White
