Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in , and it was established in Usenet resembles a bulletin board system BBS in many respects and is the precursor to Internet forums that are widely used today. Discussions are threaded , as with web forums and BBSs, though posts are stored on the server sequentially. A major difference between a BBS or web forum and Usenet is the absence of a central server and dedicated administrator. Individual users may read messages from and post messages to a local server, which may be operated by anyone. Usenet is culturally and historically significant in the networked world, having given rise to, or popularized, many widely recognized concepts and terms such as " FAQ ", " flame ", sockpuppet , and " spam ". The name Usenet comes from the term "users network".