If you’ve read Eyal’s mission statement you know that the bulletin boards of the 1990’s are the main inspiration behind the BBS platform. (If you haven’t, I suggest you go read it after this post. 😉) These bulletin boards offered none of the features that BBS does above providing a place for people of like interests to find each other. So what made these boards successful without any monetary incentives to use them?  
        I think it’s worth examining why these bulletin boards came about, and who actually used them, to understand why they were successful and how BBS differs from them.

   First of all, the amount people that actually used PC’s back then for anything more than word processing was relegated to a very small percentage of the population. Back then we called people “geeks” if they had an interest in computers and those geeks were predominantly white males who could actually afford a computer.  That was a vast departure from society of today where the norm is nearly every person has a computer (phone) in their pockets and use it daily to interact with others. 

    Those computer people, being a unique group themselves, had interests that were often times not mainstream, and therefore didn’t have anyone in their personal lives to discuss them with, so they created bulletin boards on the internet to find each other. The board topics they created were extremely specific,  I’m in my 40’s and I remember entire bulletin boards for one specific computer game like Might and Magic or Doom. Or boards dedicated to a specific model of car, or engine alone, not the entire brand. (Some actually still exist today like NASIOC which is a bulletin board specifically for people that tune Subaru’s.)

     The point is, the need for these boards existed before the boards themselves did. The obscurity of the topics alone attracted users  because it was literally the only place to connect with others that had the same interest.  What we have mostly on BBS are boards created with ease of publishing and profit in mind, not genuine interest. We have topics that are so wide open and mainstream that simple Google search results become the majority of the content on these boards and in turn engagement becomes forced. 

     In my humble opinion, BBS’ success will rely heavily on the uniqueness and obscurity of each board and the genuinely interested users that will attract, not with topics that cast a wide net hoping to pick up everyone. It will be the thoughts and opinions of people that have a genuine interest or insight into these topics that’s sets BBS apart from other social sites, not generic content gleaned from the internet with a few added words to get around content rules. 

     
    Thank you for your time. 🙏