Usenet

Usenet is a set of protocols for generating, storing and retrieving news articles (which resemble Internet mail messages) and for exchanging them among a readership which is potentially widely distributed. Usenet was one of the earliest forms of user discussion on the Internet, but today has largely been replaced by blogs, instant messaging, personal web pages and other tools. Usenet has significant cultural importance in the networked world, having given rise to, or popularized, many widely recognized concepts and terms such as FAQ and spam. Usenet is a worldwide bulletin board system of user submitted notes or comments on various subjects that are posted to servers on a worldwide network. Usenet was the initial Internet community and the place for many of the most important public developments in the commercial Internet. Today, Usenet has diminished in importance with respect to mailing lists, web forums and weblogs.