Apr 15, 2015 11:39 PM
When the internet was young and Mozaic (Web Browser) (wikipedia.org) was the browser of choice. A lot of people still utilised FTP servers and Telnet to access Bulletin Boards, One of the best discussion mediums of the time was Usenet Newsgroups. The service in it's time had topics and articles posted up by those that frequented along with a number of news chains (Syndication pre RSS) and discussion through email was conducted. Newsgroups pre-dated forums such as this.
In recent years the advent of many larger "social networking" sites has cast a huge shadow over the now ageing and dwindling services, but does that advent the demise of Newsgroups?
Well I suggest not. Newsgroups while old and potentially littered with history of anarchic fallout from random posters and abusers alike is still likely a format for communication that some which are now seen as technophobes (pre-twitter/facebook) probably still use to this date. The factor that newsgroups themselves isn't run by a single large corporation but a mesh of anarchic enthusiasts suggest that it is still alive and well, and the place to be if you don't want all your information owned by a large social networking mega corporation.
Newsgroups themselves can be seen as Twitter without a Character limit.... (although some newsgroup readers might have an upload limit if you want to share binaries.)
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is also a chat system that predates most chatroom software and facebooks own poorly implimented attempt at writing DDoS software. (Facebooks chat system can send so many update requests to a browser it can actually cause a router to DDoS through it's firewall filters thinking it's an attack)
IRC doesn't just handle chat, again it can allow sharing of files amongst it's users.
Neither are dead and are very much alive (and I'll likely look further into services related to these for this website in the future).
Have you used or still use Newsgroups/IRC? Have you any fond memories or funny stories? Do you know of any particular servers/channels or groups to subscribe to of interest?
In recent years the advent of many larger "social networking" sites has cast a huge shadow over the now ageing and dwindling services, but does that advent the demise of Newsgroups?
Well I suggest not. Newsgroups while old and potentially littered with history of anarchic fallout from random posters and abusers alike is still likely a format for communication that some which are now seen as technophobes (pre-twitter/facebook) probably still use to this date. The factor that newsgroups themselves isn't run by a single large corporation but a mesh of anarchic enthusiasts suggest that it is still alive and well, and the place to be if you don't want all your information owned by a large social networking mega corporation.
Newsgroups themselves can be seen as Twitter without a Character limit.... (although some newsgroup readers might have an upload limit if you want to share binaries.)
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is also a chat system that predates most chatroom software and facebooks own poorly implimented attempt at writing DDoS software. (Facebooks chat system can send so many update requests to a browser it can actually cause a router to DDoS through it's firewall filters thinking it's an attack)
IRC doesn't just handle chat, again it can allow sharing of files amongst it's users.
Neither are dead and are very much alive (and I'll likely look further into services related to these for this website in the future).
Have you used or still use Newsgroups/IRC? Have you any fond memories or funny stories? Do you know of any particular servers/channels or groups to subscribe to of interest?