Tag: Usenet

The Curious Case Of Usenet, IRC & Why Twitter Needs To Die

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I had a dream last night about how easy it would be to use any number of great Usenet clients as a the basis of a Web interface for a new discussion service that would be a “Twitter Killer.” Some of these clients, especially the ones you had to pay for, were really, really good. They were feature rich and fun to use and got the job done. Figure out a way to integrate IRC concepts into the interface and you have the makings of something really, really cool.

Of course, you’d have to update the experience some simply because people have Twitter, Usenet and Reddit as a frame of reference. But the general concepts you would use for such a service are extremely powerful and useful in today’s world.

One of the reasons why it took me years to use Twitter is I was so used to Usenet’s interface that I didn’t get what the big deal was about. Even now, I struggle to understand how anyone would use Twitter instead of Usenet and the answer is, of course: they don’t know Usenet even ever existed.

Usenet was not perfect and any service you designed would have to be designed from the ground up to address some modern needs. You would have to be able to integrate advertising seamlessly and you would have to address some basic issues that simply didn’t exist 20 years ago when Usenet and IRC were popular.

One issue I think would be interesting to address is newsgroup — or whatever you called them — creation. In my imagination, you would give verified account holders exclusive ability to create new newsgroups. You would give them other privileges, but not too many simply because you wouldn’t want to burden them with administration duties. Yet I think a lot of thought leaders would get off on the notion they had more power than just the average user. Now, of course, being a verified account holder would come at a price: you’d have to use your real name.

Another issue that would have to be addressed is cross posting. Cross-posting spam was a real issue with Usenet and I think simply wouldn’t give people the power to cross post at all. Or maybe just give it to verified account holders within those groups they had created.

Once you assume you’re going to use Usenet and IRC concepts as the basis of a Twitter Killer, there are so many intriguing, interesting tweaks you would be able to implement. Because Usenet was based on the notion of threaded entire-page posts, you could do some interesting things with content providers. They could shoot out their articles — in full — into the system and then people could quote the content directly through inline editing. The content providers make money because the ads associated with the content would still be associated with it. Done properly, this service I imagine could not only revolutionize content online, but, in a sense, bring back blogging from the dead.

Another interesting twist to the old Usenet concept is directly integrating IRC concepts into it as well. This is a little bit more fuzzy, but somehow you would make it so you would be able to enjoy now only the experience of old AOL Chat rooms but the old Usenet experience as well with the same service. So, it would be something like, you would have a public chat associated with each new newsgroup. Or something.

Additionally, something that would be really cool is what you might be able to do with profile pages with this service. If you had a way of cutting through the enormous amount of discussion such a service would generate by linking what you contributed to the service to your profile page, that might be really popular. Of course, you would have the usual Trending topics as well.

I also really like the idea of one-click recorded video-conferencing being associated with this as well. It would be cool if you could have a text chat with someone, then hit a button and start a recorded public video chat that would be associated with a post. Maybe only verified account holders could do this, but I think, in general this is a pretty strong concept.

Now, I don’t expect any of this to happen. I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn. But I use Twitter so much and miss Usenet so much that I keep thinking about this concept over and over again. I keep thinking of different interesting use-cases. I have posted an enormous amount of Instagram videos on this subject and the only reason why I don’t do it again is I have started to use my Instagram account for pictures more than anything else.

Of Usenet, IRC & A Proposed ‘Twitter Killer’

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Only because this really bugs me do I keep writing about this. It just strikes me as odd that there are well-established design concepts that existed 20 years ago that we no longer have in public online discussion. I’m thinking specifically, of course, of Usenet and IRC. Usenet more than IRC for reasons that will become clear soon enough.

Compared to today’s online discussion systems, Usenet was both extremely difficult to use and surprisingly feature rich. The closest thing to Usenet today is Reddit, but I find Reddit useless and poor implementation of Usenet concepts. It seems pretty obvious to me that if Silicon Valley could stop drooling over AR and VR long enough to pay attention, they would see that an online discussion service that brought back the concepts of Usenet in conjunction with IRC would be both popular and profitable.

One of the things that killed Usenet 20 years ago was no one knew how to use it to make money because it was designed for discussion, not money. But if you learned from Facebook, it wouldn’t be too difficult to design something like Usenet that wasn’t so much like Reddit that people just shrugged and said meh. There was a lot going on with Usenet that we simply don’t have anymore. It’s really strange. Over the last 20 years, we too a quantum leap back in functionality when it comes to online discussion.

If you would somehow combine the concepts of Usenet and IRC in a big way, in a way that the masses could understand and enjoy, I think both popularity and profit would quickly come your way. Again, I have to note, I’m just a dreamer. I just daydream a lot and remember using Usenet 20 years ago and loving it and now in middle-age I miss it a lot. I long for the functionality of Usenet in an online service that aims to eat Twitter’s lunch. Twitter, unlike Facebook, seems really weak. In the past, I thought there was a chance to go head-to-head with this concept against Facebook, but after much thinking I realize it’s Twitter, not Facebook that a Usenet/IRC concept combo would be most effective.

Not only is it really weird that Usenet has vanished into the mists of time, but IRC has, too. Now, of course, in the enterprise, Slack exists. But 20 years ago AOL was making so much money from chat rooms they were able to buy Time-Warner. So, obviously, there is a use case for what I suggest. And it makes a lot of sense, at least to me, that the next step for the Twitter space would be live chat like what we found with IRC and AOL Chat Rooms 20 years ago. But there is a real chance that AR & VR is where all the money is going to and there’s no changing that.

And, yet, a little part of me can’t help but continue to daydream. I really did love Usenet 20 years ago and it would be so much fun to have that functionality available again. There is just so much you could do with the many features that Usenet had if you updated them to modern social media expectations. But, alas, I fear it’s going to remain just a daydream. Which, at least in my opinion, is too bad.

Yet More Idle Mulling Of A ‘Twitter Killer’

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I have discussed this at great length, but it does seem to me that the time is ripe for a “Twitter Killer.” Twitter is a mess. It was never designed for discussion and pretty much it’s completely useless. It serves a cultural purpose and as such we force it to work, but in real terms it’s completely useless.

The ironic thing is, 20 years ago, people had online tools that were significantly better than Twitter. I speak, of course, of Usenet and IRC. Now, some of the functionality of Usenet exists with Reddit, but it’s so poorly implemented as to be useless at least for me. I have heard rumblings that they’re going to revamp their interface, so maybe some of my complaints will be addressed by Reddit sooner rather than later. Time will tell, I guess.

But 20 years ago, Usenet was a public discussion system that, at its height in about 1996, was a large-scale discussion system that was feature rich and allowed for any number of different use-cases that simply aren’t found with Twitter. You had full-page posts. You had robust threading. You had subdivision of topics. Meanwhile, with IRC — or AOL Chatrooms, for that matter — you had massive live chat taking place. Now, the only place you can find IRC-type functionality is with enterprise Slack.

Anyway, the point is, I feel that while Silicon Valley is mentally masturbating about bitcoin and VR & AR that someone, somewhere should design a service for the masses that draws directly from Usenet and IRC. Maybe not a direct copy, but something similar that is easy to use and yet has the functionality of those two services in the same place. I have gone into great detail about my vision for this on my Instagram account, but I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn, so it’s highly unlikely I would be involved with anything should it ever happen.

I feel as though this is ever-more-urgent now that Trump is president and he is a creature of Twitter. Maybe if we killed Twitter, replaced it with something a bit more feature rich, then the service in itself would in some way mitigate Trump as a media animal. Maybe I’m being delusional, maybe I’m not.

I have given this a lot of thought, and to me, what you do is you give Verified Account holders a little bit more power than the average user. Maybe they, alone, could create topic subdivisions, which I call “Groups.” Within Groups would be “Discussions.” Discussions, depending on my mood, would be something like live chat that had a feature rich option to use video and entire page posts. Or something. Something where you had the best of both IRC and Usenet with a dash of video thrown in for good measure.

Regardless, I just really like talking about this because Trump worries me and anything that might take a bite out of his media ability is something that would make all of us safer. But, like I said, I don’t have any hope. Unless I fall into a huge amount of money and can do this my self, nothing will come of it. Oh well.