5 Vintage Versions of Modern Social Media from Centuries Ago

Very interesting! An example:

Long before there was Facebook, there was the Republic of Letters — a vast and intricate network of intellectuals, linking the finest "philosophes" of the Enlightenment across national borders and language barriers. This self-defined community of writers, scholars, philosophers and other thinkers included greats like Voltaire, Leibniz, Rousseau, Linnaeus, Franklin, Newton, Diderot and many others we’ve come to see as linchpins of cultural history. Mapping the Republic of Letters is a fascinating project by a team of students and professors at Stanford, visualizing the famous intellectual correspondence of the Enlightenment, how they traveled, and how the network evolved over time.