It took a while for me to catch on too. I'd heard of LJ, but didn't realize how big it was becoming. Then a site I was going to had technical problems for about a month, and we all sort of congregated on LJ. (Some of those people are still on my flist.)

I remember egroups! I never went much, but I remember seeing them. Of course, I also remember really, really simple messageboards that actually looked like bulletin boards.