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USENET  (1980)

USENET was introduced in 1980 and was categorised by the posting of ‘articles’ based on their content and subject.  This formed subject hierarchies with potential for long term participation and might be described as early ‘online communities’ that developed around specific content/ subject areas.  It was certainly a significant development, as it created the foundations of bulletin boards and message groups that we know today. 

These communities are considerably weaker than ‘real life’ communities, if they can be described as this at all.  From one perspective this is due to a limited number of people and diversity of community members.  This was not helped by the Internet consumer at the time however, who was predominantly urban, middle class, white demographic (Crockett, 1999).  ‘Community’ is also often considered in its truest sense as having physical proximity between its members. 

Never-the-less relationships of some kind were made within this context.  People were able to ‘disclose’ information about themselves (as seen in the Johari Window) and about many others who were in the community.  However social interactions like ‘self discovery’ are not pronounced in forums like this, as other users often disapprove of personal posts that are ‘off topic’.  The focus of interaction is centred on information sharing rather than social relations and the health of the community. This often led to short term social interests, rather than a cohesive and long term community that transcended the original subject matter.