old media analogies:
telephony. conference calls.

comments:
Net inherently distributed/de-hierarchized.
Web inherently for global collaboration.

examples:

• email
  (many-to-many, time-shifted)
• web-based email, bulletin boards
  (many-to-many, time-shifted, location-independent)
• ICQ, Internet Relay Chat, Instant Messenger, chat rooms
  (many-to-many, live)
• MUDs <ultima online>
  (many-to-many, live, multimedia)
• playdo graffiti, vectorama, net.flag
  (many-to-many, live, time-shifted, multimedia)
• letsbuyit.com
  (many-to-one, location-independent)
• RSS [rich site summary / really simple syndication] <k10k.net, k10k syndicated, again, and again | reblog (aggregated, filtered), del.icio.us (group indexed)>
  (many-to-many, database)

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