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Viliam comments on Turning the Technical Crank - Less Wrong
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Solving such integration and interoperability problems is what standards are for. At some point the Internet decided it didn't feel like using a standard protocol for discussion anymore, which is why it's even a problem in the first place.
(http is not a discussion protocol. Not that I think you believe it is, just preempting the obvious objection)
That's an interesting point. What are the reasons NNTP and Usenet got essentially discarded? Are some of these reasons good ones?
Just a guess: having to install a special client? The browser is everywhere (it comes with the operating system), so you can use web pages on your own computer, at school, at work, at neighbor's computer, at web cafe, etc. If you have to install your own client, outside of your own computer, you are often not allowed to do it. Also, many people just don't know how to install programs.
And when most people use browsers, most debates will be there, so the rest will follow.
That doesn't explain why people abandoned Usenet. They had the clients installed, they just stopped using them.
The amount of people using the Internet and the Web has been increasing geometrically for more than two decades. New users joined new services, perhaps for the reasons I gave in my other comment. Soon enough the existing usenet users were greatly outnumbered, so they went to where the content and the other commenters were.
Yes, the network effect. But is that all?
It's not an explanation for why new users didn't join existing services like Usenet, just for why even the people already using Usenet eventually left.
The e-mail client that came pre-installed with Windows 95 and several later Windowses also included newsgroup functionality.