Remembering Usenet — The OG Social Network that Existed Even Before the World Wide Web

Before Reddit, before GitHub, and even before the World Wide Web went online, there was Usenet.

This decentralized network of discussion groups was a main line of communication of the early internet — ideas were exchanged, debates raged, research conducted, and friendships formed.

Usenet is one of the oldest computer network communications systems still in widespread use. It went online in 1980, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University.

Linux was officially announced on a Usenet newsgroup.

Usenet’s use may have declined over the years, but it is still quite active. It is good to see that although the masses may often only know about Reddit, Facebook, etc, there are many of the older social networks still running, with thousands of daily users. Another such example is IRC (I post to my own IRC group daily).

Despite new social networks, there is still plenty of space and use on the older networks. Not everyone just flocks to the newer, flashy websites. I suppose it also means that the users on Usenet and IRC are also likely to have a slightly different focus on how they communicate. I also doubt you’ll find many Gen Z etc users on those older networks.

Whilst the original Usenet is paid access, If you want to ‘lurk’ on Usenet groups you can also try out the free Eternal September service. I use a client app called Pan to read Usenet groups.

See itsfoss.com/remembering-usenet
#Blog, #retro, #socialnetworks, #technology, #Usenet