The point is, the web ate all the other info-sharing protocols, except for mail (which does look worse than ever, but still works) .. and as a result its near-impossible for a new user to easily share their content from their own computer to the rest of the world ..

I wouldn't say that really happened until after sometime in 2015.

My greatest hope for an open social network that people actually use and truly threatens Facebook & friends still rests on something built on top of email. A social-client that uses the email system as its transport layer, basically. It even already has calendaring for events! Heh.