The Changing Face of Community

Alt title: NNTP is Dead. Long Live the King! I am not old school like BBS’s and gopher but I have been online since 95. I didn’t get into SQL until about 99. Back then there were mostly just NNTP usenet groups and majordomo style mailing lists for SQL communities. I loved both of them up until a few years ago. I got bored with them. I got bored with the internet in general. I jumped back into the SQL NNTP group and MSDN forums in 2007. To be honest, it was mainly to promote my blog by having a link in my sig. I was turned off by it because there were like 10 answerers to every person asking questions. The same 10 questions get asked every other day. For answerers, they are rewarded for quantity instead of quality. Am I jaded? Maybe Then I found twitter along with other social sites and it was like there was this new thing called the Internet again. It is more than just twitter. Twitter is the glue that combines blogging, RSS feeds, Facebook(and others), mobile social networking, real time search, and an open web. Not quite sure what it is called….. Anyway, I was curious if others are thinking the same way, if it is affecting traditional communities and what the future holds. I researched and came across these interest tables. Messages by Month for Microsoft.public.sqlserver.server since inception

Messages by Month for Microsoft.public.sqlserver.programming since inception

Both peaked in 2003. If I had to guess, the decline from 2004-2007 was because HTTP forums like MSDN and third parties became more popular. What is really interesting is looking at the % of drop from 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 vs. the previous same month year over year drops from 2004-2007. The decline on NNTP is hastening. The biggest drops have occurred when the SQL Server community really embraced social networking apps like twitter and facebook along with sites like StackOverflow. That is my hypothesis. No proof. Just cold hard unforgining numbers to interpret. Watching the trend as time progresses will be interesting. I am not happy that NTTP is declining but happy that something better is taking its place. Thoughts? P.S. Change is good otherwise we would be living in caves bonking small animals with clubs.

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