Does anyone here recall the PBBS systems of the 1980’s? 1970’s?
@pizzalinux1
Yeah. They were a very early form of social networking, used like online forums and for file sharing, but more limited and local. They were more Decentralized. Each BBS was independent. There was no central network connecting them. Sometimes they were very slow. Is that what you were referring to? 
Yes. In West Los Angeles there was a large warehouse for drive through customers. The name was “Buy Phone”. You would use a PBBS to locate their virtual store. They had a slow drop down menu of food items and some houseware items. You checked off the items you want to buy and drove to the store and through the entrance. NO PARKING LOTS saves cost to the store. An attendant would hand you your items and you could pay with cash, check or credit card. I once bought an inkpen through them just for the experience. This was in late 1970’s.
You mentioned slow! It was slower than slow since in my area the public telephone system could only support speeds of 60, 66 or 75 baud, when you were lucky. FAX machines required much higher speeds. Many used acoustic phone couplers over the regular telephone lines. Some hobbyists were using x.25 packet switching on private networks.
I used a computer with a serial interface that used 7E0 Seven data bits, even parity bits, and zero stop bits. 7-bit ASCII like ASR 33 Teletype machine. The hobby computers were soon using 8N1 for modem communications ( TRS 80, Apple and more ). I was using a Data General Nova 2 with punched paper tape 7E0 or 7E1. Lots of racket.