Is this spam?
No.
Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee OM KBE FRS FREng FRSA FBCS pretty much invented the web. He put up the first site and page on 8/6/1991. It is still there (http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html).
In those early days, sites that ran web servers allowed users to put up their own information, files, programs, etc. to share. Users controlled their information. Before the web, there were gopher, ftp, and nfs (file shares spanning the network) services.
So imagine an app to replace Facebook, or even the Free Republic. The app may be free (for the Free Republic) or paid for (the Facebook Replacement). Rather than all your postings and data being on servers or data centers that you have no control over, that information is in a "pod" that belongs to you. Obviously, you'd have to pay for that "pod" but it's yours to do with as you please. Multiple apps could use your "pod." You can develop or acquire apps to put in your "pod" and you control access to those apps.
The first thing I put up onto the web was an audio file of me pronouncing my last name. That was in 1994 or so.