It lived as long as people who used it were select technical elite. You know, people with genuine interests, using it to meet other, like minded people.

But whenever people meet in unmoderated digital world, all sorts of other toxic people follow -- spammers, trolls, etc. People who don't care about the community or personal exchanges.

This makes the place toxic and unpalatable to the ones who started it and so the real people just leave and the place dies.