There was, and the reality is that most people were not able to use it effectively enough to be a replacement for FB. Sure, tech heavy users were fine with mailing lists, cc's, attachments, etc - but most of the world wasn't.

Email's been around forever. If email were a viable alternative, FB would not exist. The amount of sharing between the Sudanese guy and his family skyrocketed after FB came along.

And this was before smartphones.