Usenet NEWS vs. Bittorrent
Leo Mauler
webgiant at yahoo.com
Sun Jul 13 17:32:35 CDT 2008
--- On Sun, 7/13/08, Jonathan Hutchins <hutchins at tarcanfel.org> wrote:
> On Sunday 13 July 2008 03:09:56 pm Leo Mauler wrote:
>
> > 11,000,000 messages a DAY in *current* NetNews traffic
> > is not "me and a couple of buddies".
>
> My own numbers were mere guesses, as I expect
> Mr. Watts' are. Yours would carry a stronger
> authority if you cited a source.
I *did* cite a source in the message to which you responded, as I did when I first quoted the 11,000,000 figure (NetNews posting is currently hovering around 10,000,000 daily message posts). The full text you responded to read like this (note the linked source in parentheses):
Leo> 11,000,000 messages a DAY in *current*
Leo> NetNews traffic is not "me and a couple
Leo> of buddies". The "three of us" aren't
Leo> generating that much daily traffic all
Leo> on our own. Clearly there are a lot
Leo> more than three NetNews users, and I
Leo> was under the impression that companies
Leo> ignored huge markets at their peril.
Leo>
Leo> (http://www.newsadmin.com/usenet.asp)
Newsadmin did note a brief dip in daily NetNews posting traffic at the beginning of July, from 10 million daily messages to 9 million daily messages, when TWC dropped NetNews service. I say a brief dip because it was back up to the regular 10 million figure within a week (as users found alternative NetNews servers), showing that the market for NetNews exists and TWC has (or possibly "had") enough regular NetNews users to generate 1 million NetNews posts a day (hint: quite a lot more than "three people"). Any user market which can generate 1 million NetNews posts a day is ignored at an ISP's peril (as there is considerably more than three people in such a group).
> I agree with your premise, the "Usenet News"
> community is not insignificant, nor is the medium
> obsolete for either filesharing or conversation.
Thank you.
On a note of statistics more related to the mailing list, the top 100 text-only message boards, ranked by posting activity, contain 17 Linux and UNIX newsgroups, with a grand total of 6,798 unique messages posted every day to these groups.
Linux-related groups and their newsadmin "daily posts" ranking, from the same source used above (http://www.newsadmin.com/usenet.asp):
34 - comp.os.linux.misc,
35 - alt.os.linux,
37 - comp.os.linux.setup,
38 - comp.os.linux.announce,
42 - comp.unix.shell,
48 - comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,
49 - comp.os.linux.hardware,
50 - comp.unix.misc,
51 - comp.os.linux.networking,
53 - comp.os.linux.security,
70 - alt.linux,
76 - comp.os.linux.x,
80 - linux.kernel,
88 - comp.security.unix,
95 - alt.os.linux.slackware, and
99 - alt.os.linux.redhat.
Nearly 7,000 unique messages a day posted to Linux and UNIX Newsgroups. That is not an insignificant number of people.
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