Usenet NEWS vs. Bittorrent

[Leo Mauler]

--- 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.