Seems pretty alive to me. As for then stifling competition and copying them, it happens in every industry, yeah it's shit, but you just have to compete on value and service.
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Today, my Uber driver was a DJ and he mentioned how stink the internet is. He is still using Usenet now. This is how pathetic internet nowadays.
And Silicon Valley is the least creative place I've lived. It is quite pathetic. It is "creative" through "newspaper" only. You can't argue against their success.
Nothing is more successful than success. You can't argue against success.
I wouldn't know about silicon valley. A)I'm not American so it doesn't really effect me, b)well I guess a summed it up haha.
I socialise with all my mates using voice comms recently, we try out new games and leave messages on steam.
I frequently read new and interesting news and science pieces from places I have never hear of, thanks to Google news and Reddit.
I don't miss the old internet pre Google days, facebook seems like a 900lb gorilla, but aside from auto blocking their tracking buttons, it never effects me.
I do think it can seem depressive though, I do occasionally miss bulletin boards, but then I remember how annoying it was to dial in hahedit: typos, thanks phone
You still have flourish of subtopics and categories and groups you can post to on reddit just like you were able to do on usenet bulletin boards. However for the most of places there the problem of an eternal-september is in constant effect in so far as everyone with an internet connection and an account can post, which makes moderators (unbiased ones especially!) all the more valuable