2.1. Advent of the Promiscuous Newsreader

Since Version 2, Netscape Navigator has included a newsreader that could access not only a default news server (typically, your ISP's) but others as well. Moreover, it could keep track of your interactions with multiple news servers, remembering for each which groups you subscribed to, and which messages you read. To show why this matters, Netscape deployed its own news server as a standalone that did not mirror the Usenet. On that server, Netscape's newsgroup hierarchy, which would have taken forever to develop if it had to follow the social and political rules that govern Usenet newsgroup formation, appeared overnight. The Netscape news servers soon supported a huge online community of technical people committed to using and extending Netscape's client and server products. To these folks, secnews.netscape.com, and later, news.mozilla.org, became unique destinations on the Net, bookmarked in the same way that AltaVista and Lycos were. On its news site, Netscape built mind share, enabled users to provide one another with technical support, and conducted a massive ongoing focus group.