In the year 2011 the WorldWideWeb celebrated its 21st Birthday, not with a big bang, but many people will remember the start of the WWW in 1990. 21 years is an impressive age in a time where computers are getting thinner and lighter every year and Smartphones are more powerful than most of the computers 10 years ago.
But if you compare Usenet to the WorldWideWeb you will realize that the WWW is still a teenager. Usenet started 1979 when two young US students started sharing information between their UNIX based Computers. Between the 80s and the 90s Usenet was one of the most important sources for computer and tech fans. Usenet was used to share information and thoughts about nearly every topic but most users loved to talk about computer and technology. So it’s no big surprise that big companies like Microsoft were first mentioned (May 1981) in Usenet. Another cool example is IMdB (Internet Movie Data Base) who was “founded” in Usenet when thousand Users wrote about their favorite Movies and ranked them. This was the first step on IMdBs way up becoming one of the most important movie sources on the internet.
Usenet has such a great history and will always be a keep in mind as one of the first “forums”. But it changed a lot in the last couple of years. Since the WWW started its success story in 1990 Usenet lost a lot of Users and fans. But Usenet was never dead; Usenet just became unpopular over night.
The big comeback came around the years 2000/2001 when some users started sharing binary files over Usenet. Sharing binary files was no new technology but it was something nobody ever did before and so the Usenet got back in the spotlight. The first professional Usenet Provider started selling access to those Newsgroups and the community grew a lot. Now in 2011 there are a lot of those providers, offering not only access but also Highspeed-Downloads and awesome Newsreaders. The Usenet is now open to the mainstream computer user without any knowledge about computer or configuration of a Newsreader. And these are the users of the future. Sharing, posting and downloading files is the future for the Usenet. Nowadays Usenet has nearly as much user as back in the good old days when the WWW wasn’t invented.
And Usenet will always be popular, even in a future where Internet, Social Networks and Web 2.0 are still the Number one sources for all kinds of information. Especially in times where SOPA and internet-censoring is big topic in the web. Usenet is “un-censorable” and “un-destroyable”.
This guest article was provided by Thomas, a Usenet fan from Germany who recently started reviewing Usenet providers.
World Wide Web is already 21 years:) Please please how time flies:)
Usetnet was a reat tool at the time, bacin the das I never understood how to use it, and really just gave it up, this era its more for p2p, and less for actual communities.
Nice post i like it very much, Yes you are right WorldWideWeb celebrated its 21st Birthday, not with a big bang, but many people will remember the start of the WWW in 1990. Keep up good work.
Is Usenet actually a file sharing site?? I have seen it when i searched for ebooks, it provided high speed downloads after paying a fees.
Just to give a better understanding about Usenet, it is not an internet. As a matter of fact it’s a set of people who exchange articles and sometimes refer to us as newsgroup.
This is a good info that I can adopt to your site, I never knew about usenet before, I am glad you have shared this. file sharing is very useful specially for internet business.
Yeah it might be great at that time on sharing or sending files over computer when computer was initially invented. Now, we have seen lots of websites with similar concept and UTorrent and Limewire are the two big example of system based on Usenet.
The future of the Usenet is very brighter and it will continue to exist as long as there is an interest in the conversation on the news groups.
HELLO
thnx for this post quite informative for me really i m going to share it with my frnds also who do not knw abut this thnx for the share
Usenet will really shine during these “SOPA months”
hi..
thanks for sharing the info..
i hope it will help to the nature….
Hey there this is a wonderful post and your blog has got a good collection of resourceful articles… Thanks for making this blog dofollow..
This is the first time I heard of Usenet although I’ve been on the internet for years. Nice informative post! Keep it up!
I have not heard on Usenet before. Sounds like it is worth checking into though.
This is a great article -Downloads and awesome Newsreaders. The Usenet is now to the mainstream computer user without any knowledge about computer, And Usenet will always be popular, even in a future where Internet high-speed . Thanks for the sharing information
Very Interesting! I would highly agree with Veronica’s common besides the good information this is something what one should consider is that this is not really an internet but set of people exchange articles and other related resources!
Great post! I hope that Usenet will surely be invulnerable with hackers that always want to prove themselves to the world. 🙂 Thanks for the history lesson. I really enjoy reading your post.
Ahhh…buletin boards and news readers. Those were the days.
I still think that geospace was the first social media. The only thing facebook has on top of it is that back then you needed to know HTML.
I think it’s amazing that usenet has survived this long to be honest. But i mus admit I myself have started using it recently as I get much better speeds that other filesharing protocols.
But which is better, Usenet or www?
Hello
Hey, really thank you for great resources i read on your blog.
And i totaly agree with other posters, that Usenet will be always on the top…
Thank you again for great info.
Mark