Funny, I've discovered scuttlebutt, that you're talking about, while I was reading about cluster membership and fault detection protocol. I was so confused of how all of this chat rooms have to do with what I was reading about just a minute ago.

Your comment piqued my interest, but I didn't find the android (Manyverse) or desktop (Patchwork) apps to be user friendly. The UIs had a few UX oddities and unless you are convinced to join by others who are already using it, the social network is barren. Even trying to chain my from the most active people (last posts months ago) through their follower and following lists didn't fix my impression of it being a historical ledger.