Usenet, a few years ago, before message boards and web forums, “was” message boards and forums. Long ago (back in the early 90s!), in the days before web browsers like we know them (with pictures, Flash games, embedded videos, etc.), the Internet was text-only. You read your email with a program like Pan, and later basic text-only clients, and you browsed the web using software such as Gopher. Usenet clients were similar to today’s message boards in that you could post messages to them, and anyone who wanted to read them was able to. People could reply to messages so that everyone could read the reply (by simply posting a message to the same group), or email the individual poster.
