What killed it was that there simply wasn't fresh blood.
Looking back from today, there were also no "analytics" and no invasive pingback tracking every time you open a message (and no monetization). Why bother running things if you can't spy on people, analyze their aggregate behavior, then monetize it?
Plus, the rise of HTML-as-email meant half of a group's traffic could be people saying "PLEASE TURN OFF HTML MESSAGES" every time a new person tries to say something. It ended up being counterproductive (as counterproductive as trying to have a meaningful discussion on any front page Reddit article).
Plus, the rise of Outlook defaulting to top-reply for everybody meant entire generations of new Internet and email users had no idea how to properly reply to messages. Now we can't get rid of morons who think top replies are acceptable (sure, let's have a 6 month long email thread with N^2 copies of the message in my email box because every new reply contains every previous reply for no sane reason).
For better or worse (worse), Reddit is the new usenet but with a much narrower reach and full centralization of all control mechanisms, which deteriorates in to tiny, but oh-so-loud, drama every few months.
Looking back from today, there were also no "analytics" and no invasive pingback tracking every time you open a message (and no monetization). Why bother running things if you can't spy on people, analyze their aggregate behavior, then monetize it?
Plus, the rise of HTML-as-email meant half of a group's traffic could be people saying "PLEASE TURN OFF HTML MESSAGES" every time a new person tries to say something. It ended up being counterproductive (as counterproductive as trying to have a meaningful discussion on any front page Reddit article).
Plus, the rise of Outlook defaulting to top-reply for everybody meant entire generations of new Internet and email users had no idea how to properly reply to messages. Now we can't get rid of morons who think top replies are acceptable (sure, let's have a 6 month long email thread with N^2 copies of the message in my email box because every new reply contains every previous reply for no sane reason).
For better or worse (worse), Reddit is the new usenet but with a much narrower reach and full centralization of all control mechanisms, which deteriorates in to tiny, but oh-so-loud, drama every few months.
As for me, I still miss FidoNet.