research into usenet and BBS

usenet is a worldwide forum that started between two universities in America but now has become global. it is used to publish articles, usenet can be seen as a longer version of a blog, once you post your material everyone within that group can read your article and respond to it, however the artices that are posted are renewed every so often to make space for new ones. Bulletin Board Systems were very popular in the 70's till about the beginning of the 90's when they were replaced by the internet. they were used for uploading and downloading software as well as gaming these were accessed over a phone line using a moderm. advanced systems with multiple phones would enable users to have a chatroom forum however users had to pay to use this forum. without any personal experience i cannot comment on how using any of these sysytems is like :) however using services like IM (Instant messenger) which is a free service would have been much popular within the polulation.