Aimhere
join:2001-04-02
Green Bay, WI
| said by Usenetter :
Usenet is growing like crazy. Here's a graph showing the news feed over time.
If interest is "declining", then how come more content is posted to it every day?
The "declining" argument is BS.
That graph shows that the the amount of posts per day (in GB) has grown over the years. But I have to point out that there isn't necessarily any correspondence between the amount of posting and the number of people posting.
The amount of posting has increased for two reasons. First, the binary files being posted have grown, both in size and in quantity. Computer executables (apps, games, etc.) have steadily expanded from single-floppy disks (or even smaller) into multi-DVD-ROM monsters, while data files (music and video) have gone from tiny MIDI sequences to multi-megabyte MP3s to multi-gigabyte full-DVD videos. Second, more and more spammers "discovered" Usenet, posting their drivel in every group under the sun, and while their posts are text-only, the sheer number of them adds up.
Posting to Usenet has grown because it's still one of the easiest and cheapest (for the poster) ways to distribute [binary] stuff... no need to buy/rent a permanent server, no need to build a web GUI, nothing to maintain, no DNS registration, etc.; just subscribe to a Usenet service for a few bucks a month. But the number of people actually using Usenet for discussions seems to be steadily dwindling.
Aimhere |
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