Invisible Crowds in Cyberspace: Mapping the Social Structure of the Usenet

The Usenet is a quintessential Internet social phenomenon: it is huge, global, anarchic and rapidly growing. It is also mostly invisible. Although, it is the largest example of a conferencing or discussion group system, the tools generally available to access it only display leaves and branches – chains of messages and responses. None present the trees and forest. With hundreds of thousands of new messages every day, it is impossible to try to read them all to get a sense of the entire place. As a result, an overview of activity in the Usenet has been difficult to assemble and many basic questions about its size, shape, structure and dynamics have gone unanswered. How big is the Usenet? How many people post? Where are they from? When and where do they post? How do groups vary from one another and over time? How many different kinds of groups are there? How many groups successfully thrive and how many die? What do the survivors have that the others lack? How do different social cyberspaces connect and fit together and form a larger ecology?