My college had serious finger/.plan nostalgia when they moved from VAX to webmail in like 1998. So someone built a web version of .plans and that web tool has had a healthy life every since. Alumni, faculty, and current students all use it.
That web app reminds me a lot of Tilde.
For people younger than 35, .plan files where things that everyone with a shell account had. Plans were single files that encompassed a single long form status update with no revision history or follow model. You'd check people's plan file by fingering them (ahem). (Syntax: finger rrhoover@crosstowncollege.edu).
Since there was no follow model or concept of updated-at, you'd finger all your friends every day, constantly trying to see if any of them had updated.
Since most people on Tilde seem to be using just a single page (although it looks like you could have more than one page), the end effect seems to be a lot like .plans. Sure, you can turn your single page into a blog, as @goldman seems to have done. And I remember people doing similar things with their .plan files. But because there's no structure, there's actually a lot of room for creativity. And the pages end up having more of a what-matters-to-me in this moment, whereas blogs have a complete-history-of-everything-that-ever-mattered-to-me-pack-rat vibe.
The top innovations when .plans moved to the web were:
1. Easier editing. Duh.
2. Added a follow model. There were weird dynamics without the follower model, like pressure to update so that you didn't disappoint people, but generally, knowing which plans have been updated was good.
3. Added @messages. This was pre-Twitter, and I have an email proving that I demo'd this to Twitter folks. I did the demo because this was a rad innovation. It definitely created Plan Love (like Blog Love) and led to a lot more cross-talk.
Was Facebook like this in the beginning with just a Wall? I actually think it's a good format and I could imagine it being fairly popular.
(Also, @buster, this answers a question that I think I saw you post: What's oldest community that you're still active in? Counting platform changes: VAX to Unix to Web, I've been managing my plan and reading other people's plans since 1996)
I have been really loving Tilde.club... obviously it has a strong strong nostalgia effect for people who used the Internet pre-Mosaic but I'm also finding it really fascinating from a product perspective to remember very little of the new things are actually new things (just better, more frictionless, etc).
@rrhoover Could be! I actually think it's a great proof-of-concept for a how a back-to-basics social network could be bootstrapped. I hope someone runs with it.
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