Sure - we had it pre-internet with BBS's. There was even a standard for sharing message forums across them - FidoNET. It may look crude from todays perspectiv

Sure - we had it pre-internet with BBS's. There was even a standard for sharing message forums across them - FidoNET. It may look crude from todays perspective, but there is zero reason the same concepts couldn't take root today. The big problem is friction. Just logging into to some "free" service that someone else runs for you is all most people want to think about. I think there is a huge opportunity for a modern revival of concepts like BBS's and FidoNET, but with a modern spin on UI and communications. instead of the master nodelist like FidoNET had use a distributed directory along the lines of DNS. Heck why invent a new protocol - just adopt DNS with a few tweaks.