XPost: alt.comp.linux   
   From: this@ddress.is.invalid   
      
   Mr. Man-wai Chang  wrote:   
   > On 2/1/2026 9:33 PM, Frank Slootweg wrote:   
   >   
   > > "Usenet, conceived by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979 at the   
   > >   University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, was   
   > >   the first open social media app, established in 1980."   
   > >   
   > >    So I guess that settles it once and for all! :-)   
   >   
   > "social media app"? Usenet was an "app"? I think it's a mistake. :)   
      
     I normally also object to back-dating the use of the term 'app' by   
   several decades, but if you substitute 'app' by 'program' (or   
   'application', etc.), then for all intents and purposes, for the user,   
   Usenet *was* a program, which read/posted articles from/to the *local*   
   'spool'. A client program, reading/posting directly from/to a remote   
   news server came only much later. Remember, NetNews/Usenet *predates*   
   the Internet by quite a number of years.   
      
     FWIW, I already used/managed a NetNews/Usenet system in the early 80s.   
   Used RFA (Remote File Access) before NFS (Network File System) even   
   existed and UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy) to receive/send articles from/to   
   other systems. And yes, the user used a *program* (called 'notes' [1])!   
      
   [1]    
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)