[2]Nettime has been widely recognized for its seminal role stimulating and disseminating ideas about Netzkritik or Net Critique, net.art, and tactical media and pioneered practices such as "collaborative filtering".

[7] Unlike these other efforts, which typically sought to affiliate themselves with institutions in order to become institutionalized, nettime has remained independent — at times fiercely so.

From the beginning, the aim has been to provide a space for a new form of critical discourse on and with the nets, focussing on longer, substantive, yet non-academic writings and discussions.

Additional Nettime meetings were held during events like HackIt, (Amsterdam) the Chaos Computer Congress (Berlin), ISEA, the Ars Electronica Festival (Linz), The MetaForum Conferences (95-96) in Budapest.

Proceedings of the mailing list were periodically collected in print form, with limited editions of xerox copies and in connection with a related conference or event.