by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The thing about cherry-picking the principles of Usenet to serve as the core of a Twitter rival is it’s now or never. We have, maybe, three to six months, before things sort themselves out and we learn if the New Normal of post-Elon Musk Twitter won’t be different, or if it will.
But here’s what I would do.
First, I would look at my “Shelton Bumgarner” Instagram account that has many, many videos about this very concept. It’s the reason why I have like 14,000 posts.
Anyway, after you look at some of those videos, I would figure out what are the best elements of Usenet that you might be able to use for a direct rival to Twitter.
Here are the elements of Usenet that I think would really surprise people that we’ve lost:
Inline Editing
The ability to inline edit posts is really cool. Imagine if the New York Times shot its content into your Twitter clone and people could have a discussion within the text. Each person would have a different color. It would be a lot like Google Doc’s collaborative feature.
Full Size Posts
The ability to have full-page post with native inline editing is something we haven’t had since Usenet. Reddit’s application of fullpage posts is very ham handed.
Robust Threading
In the context of full page posts, the threading you found with Usenet is very, very powerful.
The point is — study Usenet’s features and use the more interesting and innovative ones to start a Twitter rival NOW. A lot of center-Left people are thinking about leaving Twitter altogether and all you have to do is give them something new to use and they’ll at least check it out.
