LUSENET was a free public bulletin-board system active from 1995 to 2005.

Created as an experiment by MIT

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 computer scientist and early internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 entrepreneur Philip Greenspun

Philip Greenspun

Philip Greenspun is a semi-retired American computer scientist, educator, and early Internet entrepreneur who was a pioneer in developing online communities.-Biography:...

, the TCL

TCL

TCL or Tcl may mean:* Biochemistry** TCL * Companies** TCL Corporation, a Chinese electronics company** Twin City Lines, former public transit via streetcar in Minneapolis*Computer languages...

-based system was named as a pun combination of USENET

Usenet

Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

 and luser

Luser

In Internet slang, a luser is a painfully annoying, stupid, or irritating computer user.It is a portmanteau of "loser" and "user"....

. Because LUSENET allowed anyone to start their own forum for free and did not have banner ads, it became an important alternative to commercial sites run by Yahoo

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...

 and Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

. It was long favored by non-profits and eventually blog

Blog

A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

gers in the late 1990s, such as one for the unofficial San Francisco History Index, and the popular ILX (I Love Music) forums.

The system running LUSENET crashed in March 2005 and it is no longer active. The content is frozen as of that date.