"poisoned rose" <
pro...@poissonedrose.com> wrote in message
news:prose99-6386E2...@news.eternal-september.org...
> Usenet received two lethal blows, well before the reign of Facebook and
> RMB's hate-speaking twins.
>
> 1) MySpace
> 2) AOL dropping Usenet access
Lethal? Really?
MySpace was never much of a discussion medium. And AOL? What fraction of
usenet participants do you figure were using AOL by 2005? I'd think that
fraction would be pretty small.
Most of the newsgroups' participation is diminishing rapidly, which pretty
much rules out the "hate-speaking twins". And as far as any factor specific
to RMB, I'd think the fact that most Beatles-related material has already
been re-hashed ad nauseam would trump anything else.
One of the most active musician-oriented newsgroups (alt.guitar) had over
half its regulars move en masse to a "private" Facebook group. It's even
more active there than it was in its original form. The very threat of
moderation keeps the trolls out. Yet nobody who participates has been
bounced from its inception. I think this is a decent model, but it requires
Facebook participation (and use of real names)which is a turn-off to some.
A similar effort to create a Beatles-related Facebook group has been a flop
by comparison (although I note today Brilton said on the group that he's
giving up on RMB, partially because bigpond, Australia's large ISP, just
switched off their usenet newsfeeds).
So it's really a whole lot of factors. Usenet's dying but it's not going
away slowly, and it's not clear whether it'll be really dead before I am.