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From ventnormerchants.com

I still remember when I was still in junior high school, I loved the school BBS (bulletin board servic) so much. I used to upload every piece of my creative works   on it. And I couldn’t wait to see my school mates’ comments. Then our literature tutors would come up and rate each pieces from one star to five stars. The five stars, exciting again, would be the biggest reward and encourage for my writting. BBS seemed to be the first type of access to group communication on Web. However, nowadays people tend to facebook more, twitter more, YouTube more and blog more. BBS with its limited functions deteriorated. And only some small group or institutions would utilise it as the communicating tool. It’s out of our everyday internet routine.

But I’m still reminded of BBS’s unique power sometime, especially when I view all the Chinese internet news and celebrities scandals. I’ve notived that large number of the secret news were leaked from a popular Chinese BBS, TianYa. It’s a universally-topics BBS. And no matter what news are on heat, they must have been already discussed in the BBS. Plus, it creates news too. When somebody’s personal story has gained popularity, some viewers around BBS are always trying to dig the person out and validate the truth of the story. Some fake stories got busted and became a topic. Some stories like whose child get some horrible disease got proven and kind people would contact and help the protagonists. The popularity is extreme in the BBS. And no matter how small things you wrote about, there will be people criticising, praising, discussing as an issue and dragging them into real life. So far till now, I don’t dare to say anything in the BBS since it feels like when you say something, you expose yourself totally.

Interestingly, I didn’t notice such things in Western internet. Maybe the Chinese BBS is empowered by some Chinese personal traits. Anyway, it reveals that BBS still hold its position in Web 2.0 no matter how less advanced they are.