Usenet didn't fail. It is still around, but nowhere near as vibrant as when it was 'the only game in town'. Yes it is slow, yes it is spartan. But like AM radio, it should still be kept as a no-frills alternative when things have to depend on low-bandwidth.
Like FTP, it still has a use.
But people are still attracted to "oooh, bright shiny thing!" rather than the spartan.
People using it for binary downloads can pull down data at gigabit speeds.
> it should still be kept as a no-frills alternative when things have to depend on low-bandwidth.
It's unfortunate that most websites and other services require significant amounts of bandwidth. If I'm using a GPRS connection on my phone, websites other than Hacker News are not really usable. IRC and Usenet still work though.
> People using it for binary downloads can pull down data at gigabit speeds.
Sorry. I wasn't clear. I meant that being a 'store and forward' medium rather than a broadcast medium, it can take days to propagate to all clients, rather than talking specifically about the speed of transmission.
Like FTP, it still has a use.
But people are still attracted to "oooh, bright shiny thing!" rather than the spartan.