What is the state of the indie internet?

[Syrinx]

There's much more product online now.

But there was other stuff that I liked about the Internet in 1992.

I guess because fewer people were online, we had closer communities. And we didn't allow bullies.

And we used our real names.

It seems corporate consolidation is on crack and meth, alternately.

[canetoad]

1. When a bar owner leaves

No matter how much the drinkers whined about him, he was always more genial than the new owner.

WE did not use our real names. Scammers cut their teeth on people who did. Our indiscriminate clicking lead to the porn industry being the developer of new technologies to privatise the net.

Yes, there were fewer people online: 5% of the users have ALWAYS made 95% of the noise on the net.

[eShirl]

2. well, the open source version of Second Life looks to be growing strong

http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page

not sure if that's the kind of thing you meant though