The fall of Usenet more and more looks like a mistake. I’d love to have hyper-localized newsgroups, in place of Facebook.
Often local stuff like: “Why does is smell like somethings on fire”, “Has the water been turned of” or is “Is soccer cancelled this week?” is only posted on Facebook. So if you don’t have Facebook, you can’t get those information. Then again the Facebook algorithm will hide it for three weeks before deciding that you need to know that the hot water will be turned of for quarter of the town at three o’clock.
On Usenet, MUDs, and IRC, look what could be achieved back in the day by tweaking the source code of a MUD: they converted it into a full groupware tool thanks to TCL/TK and some glue here and there.
Some newsgroup messages have a distribution header. But I don't really recall that feature being used at all during the time I was on Usenet (late '90s till about 7 years ago).
