Module 2 - Newsgroups Task

Usenet and Newsgroups are not a new idea to me. Created nearly 30 years ago Usenet and Newsgroups could be considered the original Social Networking medium of the internet. For those geeks out there or those just interested (admit it, you have to be a geek to be interested) then check out how it actually works.

Like most people who have explored the internet over the years, I innocently stumbled across Usenet and Newsgroups and found some of it's more nefarious uses. Besides this murky all to common side of what now is Usenet, a lot of people seem not to realise how much has evolved from the Usenet over the last 29 years. Giganews posted this list "Worst. Top 10 List. Ever." ;-) 10 Things Started on Usenet which highlights some interesting contributions to the net from Usenet.

In completing this task I had a play around with a few options including Google Groups and a stand alone reader for my trusty MacBook.

To begin with I shot over to Google and their implementation of Newsgroups; Google Groups where as a Gmail and Google Reader user, I all ready had an active account. Google Groups is home to vast range of topics and interests some of which correspond to Usenet while some which are exclusive to Google Groups. Content is made up of some 3011712 groups available through the service. Very similar in actual content using Google Groups itself was also relatively easy as the interface shares similar layouts and features with other Google services.

Next I decided to download a stand alone reader with my first stop to find some software. After a little searching I re-downloaded a demo version of my previous reader Unison. Installing Unison was a snap, the hardest part was actually finding a server which a) was free and b) was still active. Thanks to Newzbot.com I successfully got online and trawled through some Newsgroups across a couple of servers. Again accessing the content was easy thanks to the beautiful interface of Unison.

Through the course of these two tasks I began to remember why I moved on from this corner of the online world last time. While there is a lot of useful information and discussion on Usenet, it is far outweighed by spam, or links to porn. Newsgroups for binaries dominate the landscape while even the heavily filtered Google service wasn't immune to these activites.

Usenet was probably once a very useful means of communication, yet today I find it is full of spam and host to the underbelly of the net. Yes there are still valid conversations and sharing of knowledge going on within this world, but I find they are far outweighed by the rest. Although I hope it doesn't come to this.