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Usenet: Groups
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Usenet started with two hierarchies: mod (all moderated groups) and net (all other groups). US high school student Matt Glickman and Berkeley grad student Mark Horton wrote the 'B' version of news in 1981, enhanced over the following three years and reflecting growth of usenet from an initial three sites in 1979 to 15 in 1980, 150 in 1981 and 400 in 1982. The 'B' version allowed any single group be moderated or open, the great renaming was undertaken. A Usenet backbone was created by Gene Spafford in 1983 to rationalise propagation of Usenet news.
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Usenet is a system by which to accomplish a group discussion where individuals can participate from anyplace in the world. Unfortunately, this definition maybe so overly simplified as to be incorrect. For a more comprehensive description take a look at the description of Usenet from news.answers.
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Advertising on Usenet: How To Do It, How Not To Do It Usenet is paid for by its users, and they did not pay to receive unwanted advertising. OTOH, short and discrete announcements of products truly relevant to a particular group can be quite useful. If you are tempted to advertise, read this first.
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Originally, Usenet was the only way to group-communicate globally -- Usenet archives date back to 1981 (!). Even today, Usenet is still the place for awesome global conversation -- everything from good cheesecake recipes to politics to what's the best Mac FTP client. (Which shouldn't be much of a debate. Ahem.)
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The development of audio/video distribution through Usenet has greatly infuriated the pornography industry, as most items posted to Usenet groups are provided free of charge. Porn magnates have responded by posting naked photos of Bea Arthur and Imelda Marcos with titles like Amateurs with big b00bs!!!... decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio and making the task of finding quality pornography online ever more difficult.
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The community of computers comprising a Usenet typically does not include those of end users, e.g. home personal computers. Rather, that community consists of a group of cooperating servers. End users must have access to a member of the server community to read and post. Such access is typically achieved through the news feature of their email program or web browser or through a special program that specializes in netnews. Configuring the program requires the URL of a server, and often a user ID and password.
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