com125 assignment 2: history of newsgroups

Before the World Wide Web existed people using the Internet had to rely on each other to share information. Since there were no Internet service providers, it was only within closed communities like universities or private organizations that the Internet was used to have public conversations with other individuals. However, if you wanted to interact with people globally, Usenet was the answer. Usenet contained a wide variety of newsgroups that individuals could join which focused on a specific topic of discussion. It was like a global community that gave people an easy way of getting together even though they were in different parts of the world.

With that said, a newsgroup is a place where information can be posted and stored for a wide range of users to access; think of it as a large public message board. Most of these groups are focused on a particular topic. Some allow their users the freedom of posting on a variety of on-topic themes while others are stricter and do not approve any off-topic subject matter. The administrator of the news server has complete control on how long articles are available for discussion before they are permanently deleted from the server. In general, the majority of these “admins” keep articles for about one to two weeks.

Although newsgroups can be a valuable source of information, support and friendship, it seems as though someone always has to go and ruin a good thing. Soon enough people started to post extremely off-topic subject matter on a mass number of newsgroups. This newsgroup spam multiplied and eventually evolved to the email and web spam we currently see today. Newsgroups can in fact still be found on the web. According to Wikipedia, there are currently over 100,000 newsgroups in existence; however, only about 20,000 of those are active. Each one varies in popularity; some will only receive a few posts a month while others will receive thousands of messages in a single day.

Here is a video from YouTube that I found. I am not sure who this man is and why a chat box is streaming at the bottom of the screen but he gives a really good overview of the history of Usenet and newsgroups. Enjoy.




Seeing as we are social beings, it is evident that newsgroups have had a profound effect on many of the communal applications used on the world wide web today. Web forums, weblogs and even social networking sites like Facebook can be thought of as the offspring of newsgroups. It can even be seen as extremely common for people to participate in one or all of these applications. However, over the past decade the focus has shifted from the community to the self (in newsgroups the thread was directed by the crowd and in forums/blogs the creator dictates what is posted). For many active users these "online diaries" become more that just a way to communicate; they become a way to express deep-seeded emotions and reflect on life. For others they create a virtually accessible community and, with the media continuing to be a driving force in people's lives, these sites offer a way for people to advertise and promote themselves to the world. As human beings we naturally crave attention and the internet/web provides the perfect platform for this competition to take place.