The Internet- great until the masses join in?

[SiD the Turtle]

This is probably going to sound a bit elitist...

Years ago while I was still in school a friend of mine discovered MSN Messenger and we all started using it. This was before it became popular at all. After explaining to people who asked what we doing, we would be called geeks/nerds/[insert derogatory name here]. Then suddenly it becomes popular with the masses, it becomes the new cool thing and then of course, it goes down hill.

Similarly there are a few threads that pop up now and then about MySpace and Facebook and how they are rubbish now- they didn't used to be. In the example of Facebook a lot of people mention that it was great until they opened it up to non-university/college emails (I joined just after the rules were relaxed), it became popular with the masses, applications showed up and then it all went down hill.

Is the common theme here that things on the Internet are great until the masses show up? Are such things better when they are not popular and mainstream?

 

[SiD the Turtle]

True I tried ICQ but never got on with it.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

My comments about MSN were more down to the fact that it used to be a simple chat client and then slowly it became more bloated, with animated smilies, 'WeeMees', nudges and lots of other detestable rubbish.

Similarly Facebook was clean, simple and quite refreshing to use and then applications turned up.