The world's first Usenet server was shut down.

Last week, the world's first Usenet server shut down. It operated for over 30 years and was located at Duke University in the United States.

The server was launched back in 1979. Back then, its creators, graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, also wrote a program for using Usenet to share news between people. This program enabled the creation of the first newsgroups, which became the foundation of the Usenet network.

Usenet was the precursor to the modern internet, the World Wide Web. The number of newsgroups grew to 120,000.

However, as the internet grew in popularity, the number of newsgroup subscribers began to decline. Duke University staff cited the small number of users and the high cost of maintaining the server as the main reasons for shutting down the server.

Microsoft also plans to close newsgroups for its projects.