[stcredzero]

> It's still a centralized system with one company acting ultimately as a gatekeeper.

USENET was pretty decentralized. If that could me made to update faster, it could be the basis for a decentralized Twitter-like service.

[wmf]

The "everyone caches everything" economics of Usenet are all wrong for the modern Internet, though.

[streptomycin]

That already exists, it's called StatusNet. Unfortunately, nobody uses it.