[MattJ100]

This is not a new idea, there is some prior work:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_(protocol) (one of the earliest implementations of the idea)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogging (the general concept)

- https://spec.indieweb.org/ (existing standards for this kind of thing)

Before Mastodon there was Identica/Status.Net, before that generation of tools there were bots that would let you update a page on your website by sending a short message from your chat client. Even Twitter had SMS and XMPP interfaces for this, in the early days.