[wormius]

Good point. The early exploration did make it a lot smaller. I think moving to where people end up adding IRL friends instead of "random strangers with similar interests" (I still think Livejournal had the best way of finding online people and building those relationships as people and not just meme-sharers/reacters to dopamine). I use another age-old online community that's been around since before 2000, and with good moderation and community support, while it's been up and down, generally "keeps the faith" with the users. And that's a pretty good timeline I think 95-2005.