I've had a similar idea before, though a bit less optimistic, which is that the people on the internet back then (of which I was one) were a tiny fraction of the population filtered for their nerdy love of promising new tech. It's entirely possible that there's another community type or service that's popular right now among a small nerdy group of people who love new tech that I am not privy to because I am now older and more burned out and less prone to chasing after cool new things.