[tehwalrus]

Hmm, that's not the comparison here. Wanderers, travellers (especially those in youth hostels) were often doing that activity in part to meet a wide variety of people, something they were less able to do staying in one place at that time.

(Edit: I should mention that I'm citing my Dad in my head here, who is an embarrassingly social creature in situations where I would never strike up a conversation. He spent a lot of time travelling around Europe in the 70s staying at youth hostels, e.g. in his university vacations.)

I believe this need is fulfilled by things like Tumblr now, where there are close nit communities centred around specific (often odd) interests and identities, who are vastly geographically spread. The same could be said to an extent for other social networks too, of course, including this website :)