Tag: Usenet

The Power of The ‘Group’ Feature of My Imagined Twitter Replacement

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Even though I’m very tired of thinking about this idea because it’s just never going to happen for various reasons, I feel like letting off a little steam and writing about it some again. The key element of my proposed Twitter replacement is the Group feature.

This would be a lot easier to understand than G+’s “Circles” because it’s implementation would be pretty much just a more modern, more flexible incarnation of a Usenet newsgroup from 25-odd years ago. The key interesting part of the Group feature would be everyone could create a one for any reason for any subject.

So, imagine there’s a big breaking news story. With Twitter, you generally have to be following the right people — journalists, etc — to know what’s going on moment by moment. And, even then, what you get is a flood of information that is difficult to process because there’s no rhyme or reason to it all.

But with my imagined service, you would have two options in the breaking news use case. One would be, you could follow the user and the other would be you could follow just their Groups you were interested in. As such, you would get notifications whenever a user you followed created a new Group and you could opt-in to joining a group you found interesting. Meanwhile, you could also use a discovery feature to find Groups with a subject of interest to you as well.

And, remember, because of the redundancy involved with the service, it’s a lot less likely that a Group will grow so huge as to be unwieldly. And, if you really wanted to manage the size of any particular Group, you might even give the owner of the Group some basic administrative abilities like controlling who can post.

This brings up one potential flaw in the Group idea — management of groups might grow overwhelming and cumbersome. Most people don’t have the time, interest or energy to use granular administrative tools for a Group if they have dozens of Groups to oversee.

There are two solutions to this.

One would be your more popular accounts would probably already have a social media management team that could handle all of that. The other solution is you could have some sort of universal application feature that would set the permissions of all your groups and you could change it for an individual group as necessary.

Remember, the only reason why I even mention any of this is Twitter is in trouble and, as such, there is a window of opportunity for someone, anyone to swoop in and fill that technological and social space with something new and better.

But, in general, it’s a very limited window and you would have to have a lot of spunk and vision to pull it off because, lulz, all the momentum is in Web3 and AI.

The Vision Thing: My Personal Pitch For A Twitter Replacement

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I only bring this up because it definitely seems as though Twitter is going to crash and burn pretty soon, now that we have learned that Elon Musk wants to cut 75% of its staff.

I’ll try to be as brief as possible, I’ve wasted too much energy on this fantasm already.

The point of this Twitter replacement would be to bring back, to modernize the best bits of the old Usenet newsgroups. Now, I’m WELL AWARE that Reddit serves the function of Usenet in the modern age. Ok, I get it. But the idea that I have would be to be a far more feature rich and nuanced interpretation of Usenet.

What makes Twitter so engaging? That’s the key issue when thinking about how you might build a better version of it. One element of its success is how simple it is — there’s no onboarding to the service and you can really just jump right in without having to read any additional documentation like a FAQ. The service’s simplicity combined with having zero learning curve is what has given it whatever success it’s found to date.

The idea I have is a far more simplistic version of the “circles” concept that G+ had back in the day. Instead of a Circle, you would have a Group. And these Groups would be setup in such a way that the concept would be a lot easier to understand than G+’s Circles. They would be setup a lot more like Usenet Newsgroups with discussions and threads. You would have Threads inside of a Group made up of full pages posts.

This concept is exactly what we had back in the day with Usenet newsgroups and very similar — but not exactly — like Reddit. I haven’t used Reddit in a long time, but it’s my impression that you have one post and then threaded discussions below that central post — but it’s more of a comment section instead of a full page Post like we had back in the day with Usenet.

Anyway, the point is, as part of the onboarding process, you would have to setup your own Groups — with whatever names you liked — and you would have the option of joining other people’s Groups as well. And, remember, you could create as many Groups as you like about whatever subject you liked, no matter how specific or personal.

This redundancy would allow the service to scale in ways that neither Usenet nor Reddit can. This redundancy would would, in essence, give you a sense of a “super Twitter account” in the sense that you could have ad hoc Groups by different reporters and writers devoted to the same news event — breaking or otherwise.

I could go on and on — and I have on my Instagram account (SheltonBumgarner.) You can see me, over the course of way, way too many Instagram videos flesh out this concept pretty well. I’m embarrassed by how many videos I did on this subject over the years.

No one is ever going to take me up on this idea, of course. That’s just not how things work. But I really love the concept.

Elon Music, Twitter Is Useless

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The key problem with Twitter is it’s just a gusher of information. It’s easy to become overwhelmed with a cacophony of disjoined, unconnected information that blasts towards you. Yes, there are “Twitter Lists” that you can use to try to control things but few people use or understand them.

So, for the average user, a lot depends on who you follow to the point that it’s almost better to create specific accounts for specific interests you might have. As such, I have long thought about how Usenet, 25 years ago, was, in its own way far more feature rich than Twitter is today.

Now, obviously, Reddit pretty much fills the space that Usenet did a long time ago. And there are some serious problems with Usenet / Reddit paradigm that you have to overcome. It’s easy one for a “group / reddit” to grow too large to be usable and two there is the problem of a very, very specific culture developing within any specific group / reddit to the point that you have to create a FAQ to answer all the questions that newbies to a group may have.

And that is probably the biggest advantage of that Twitter has. The average person can just jump into Twitter and start using it, no FAQ required.

I have given this particular problem way, way, way too much thought and I think I have a solution.

What you do is, if you wanted the best of both worlds — Twitter and Usenet — what you do is you force every user of your service to create groups as part of their on boarding. As such, EVERY user would create Groups devoted to the personal and the public.

If everyone can create, in essence, an endless number of reddits for whatever happens to be going on in their lives, then that opens up a lot of opportunities that simply don’t exist at the moment.

In my imagination, instead of having a Twitter timeline, the user would see a stream of individual Posts to different Groups they were subscribed to that people they were interested in had created. You see a Post in your timeline or newsfeed and you click on it and respond. Then you could see that Post in the context of a Group, rather than just being yet another tweet in a flood of tweets.

Now, I’m very well aware that all of this is very moot. We’re all talking about AR and VR as opposed to social media and so, lulz. But it is my impression that Elon Musk is interested in turning the X.com domain name that he owns into a rival to Twitter and, as such…maybe he might think about using the general principles of Usenet for a social media service that would sort of be a combination of Twitter and Reddit?

But no one listens to me, so luz.

The Secret Sauce Of A Real Twitter Challenger

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Elon Musk really risks driving out the 1% of Twitter users. These would be the center-Left elites that all the MAGA people hate so much and yet crave the validation of.

So, I propose this — if you were to create an app like Twitter that was feature rich and cherry picked a lot of the best design elements of Usenet, a lot of those elites would use it.

If you gave the elites some way to manage their interaction with the Poors in a way that didn’t offend anyone, then, that, too would help jumpstart a new Twitter-like app.

But, lulz, no one listens to me.

A Window Of Opportunity For A Twitter Rival Based on Usenet Principles Exists


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.

The Vision Thing: Of Elon Musk, Twitter & Usenet


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

My dream.

In honor of Elon Musk potentially buying Twitter, I’m going to talk about my own vision for Twitter. My vision of Twitter is a service that, at its core, revolves around the principles of Usenet. It would not be Usenet, which is long dead and shouldn’t come back.

My dream.

Nor would it be a Reddit clone. Reddit is pretty much as close as you can get to the old Usenet experience in the modern world, but even then it lacks some fundimental elements that don’t make it all that engaging if not a 23-year-old Incel. It’s kind of all of the insular bad parts of Usenet and none of the advanced features that make it so much fun.

My dream

My vision of Twitter would be a social media network that was, at its core, based on the concept of Groups. This is similar to Reddit, yes, but I’ve really thought this through. As part of the onboarding process, you would forced to create Groups that you could any name you liked to. You could create Groups on the fly, in fact, that people could discover.

Usenet

Now, there are a lot of issues with my vision for this new, improved Twitter. First is how granular it would be. People are just too stupid and lazy to use the more complex elements of software, as can be seen by how small a portion of MS Word people use on a regular basis.

But you could come to some sort of compromise.

The point would be that once you setup Groups, you would have Posts like you did in the old Usenet days that allowed you to write not a 280 characters but as long as you liked. And, what’s more, these Posts would allow for inline editing, inline media AND be part of threaded discussions.

Usenet

Of course, this would be such a jarring change of the pretty basic Twitter UX / UI that this is all a daydream. People would freak out if you changed Twitter’s user experience THAT much. And people would complain that Twitter was simply becoming Reddit, not knowing that the principles being used were actually closer to Usenet.

I suppose you could apply the distributed nature of Usenet to Twitter as well, but that’s beyond my knowledge set. It always took time for a Usenet post to circulate around the system, which was a huge flaw and caused spam to destroy it in the end.

Anyway, Twitter has a lot of unlocked potential if you mixed its current UX / UI with that of some of the more fun elements of Usenet from 25 years ago. But no one ever listens to me so, lulz.

Usenet

If Elon Musk Was Really All That Smart, He’d Crib Features Off Of Usenet For Twitter



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It took me a number of years to get into Twitter because I was spoiled by my use of Usenet many moons ago. Listening to Kara Swisher’s Sway podcast about Elon Musk buying 9.2% of Twitter and what he wants to do with it, I’m reminded of Usenet’s feature rich experience.

It would make a lot of sense if Musk cherry picked some of the more interesting elements of Usenet. Making Twitter more like Usenet would allow for things like full page posts and inline editing. Things that we’ve somehow lost over the last twenty five years. But I’ve written at length about how one might do it, and am I’m tired of talking about something that will never happen.

Cherry picking features from Usenet opens up a whole rang of very interesting an innovative possibilities. But I think the moment for doing anything like that is long gone. We are all now just waiting for the Metaverse to get figured out.

The Annoying State of Yahoo!


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I could rant about Yahoo! for way too long and waste a lot of time, but I’ll try to be brief. Yahoo is a real missed opportunity. The reason — it continues to get millions of eyeballs everyday and it’s just there. It just exists. If I won the lottery, and could buy it, here’s what I would do — turn it into a Twitter challenger.

I’m a Very Online Twitter user and even thought the Metaverse is sexxy and what everyone is transitioning to, there is still a window of opportunity for a Twitter challenger. What you do is, update the concepts of Usenet news and then figure out a way to poach the 10% of the Twitter user base that actually produces content that people want to read.

If you did this right, you could even disrupt the newspaper industry in such a way that you probably would be hated by many, many newspaper reporters who would write nasty articles about what a dickhead you are. The newspaper industry is ripe for disruption, even though it’s not very sexxy compared to the Metaverse.

You use the Yahoo brand and all those eyeballs to setup a series of sites that would be, like, “nyc.yahoo.com” or “la.yahoo.com” that would have a paid editorial staff. The neat thing is, you would have inline editing of threaded full page posts. You would have to restrict who would have the ability to respond to posts in the service, but I think people would accept that restriction if it made the overall experience a lot more fun than Twitter is at the moment.

A mock up of part of my vision.

But none of this will happen. It’s too late. The window of opportunity has closed 10 or 15 years ago. Everything is about the Metaverse now. Now, if I could only win the lottery….

The Curious Case Of Usenet, Reddit, Twitter & Inline Editing


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We’re all in kind of a holding pattern until the next Big Thing rolls around and changes — disrupts — everything. But I will note, in passing that 25 years ago Usenet had a feature that as far as I can tell doesn’t exist in any of the available options: inline editing.

Usenet

Today, the closest we have to the Usenet of yore is Reddit, but for the ability to inline edit content that is posted. And while I totally — if reluctantly — accept that I will never get the social media platform inspired by Usenet concepts that I long for so bad, I will talk about how inline editing could be used.

Usenet

Imagine if you had an app similar to a mixture of Reddit and Twitter with a paid editorial staff and inline editing. If people could inline edit — with formatting — a webpage in the context of such an app it would blow people’s minds.

Usenet

But, like I said, I have to accept that the moment for a new social media platform is long gone. The entire Internet is mature now. We’re probably going to have to wait for $1,200 Mindcaps to come to market for anything new or innovative to occur.

Pour one out for Usenet.

Bernie Sanders & Usenet — Did He Use It?

Yeah, I used Usenet, what about it?
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m too busy developing a novel to do the basic journalism necessary to give you some sense if this is even possible, but given his age — and the fact that he had an email address in the 80s! — it’s at least POSSIBLE Bernie Sanders was on Usenet in the 80s.

Someone should look into that. If we could dig up some of his old Usenet posts — if they exist — that would be quite illuminative as to his state of mind in the 80s.

Full disclosure — I, personally, was obsessed with Usenet in the early 90s while in college. So, if you look me up, you’ll find I was something of a crank even then. Just a younger, more passionate version of my current grump old middle aged guy crankdom. Lulz!