Hi jwag,
Newsgroups, or the Usenet, got its beginnings back in late 1979. There
are some basic introductions to the usenet and the history of the
usenet found on a number of sites. The following is a list of some of
the better ones I found:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/software/part1/
http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/tcs/techsupp/newsgroups.htm
Essentially, Newsgroups as they are commonly called now, is and was
called the Usenet. The Usenet operates in a peer-to-peer framework
which means that each Usenet computer shares information with other
Usenet computers until each computer that is part of Usenet has
received all the information. However, since this is a fairly
inefficient (though highly fault tolerant) method of sharing
information, posts to the newsgroups can sometimes take minutes to
hours to propogate throughout the usenet.
While no one knows how many newsgroups there actually are, current
estimates have the number at around 40,000+. The reason that there is
not a definitive answer is due to a number of factors. 1) Newsgroups
are added and deleted constantly. 2) There is no central organization
to Newsgroups--newsgroups operate in a peer-to-peer mode where no one
server is dominant.
Your ISP probably carries on the order of 12,000 or more newsgroups:
some carry much more, while others carry much less. Usenet traffic
accounts for a tremendous amount of bandwidth and storage
space--therefore many ISP's limit the types of groups they carry. For
example, most ISP's will not carry the binaries.* branch of the usenet
as that one branch can easily represent many Gigabytes of transfers
per hour.
Probably the best search engine for the usenet or newsgroups is
Google's Groups search:
http://groups.google.com/
Google Groups has an archive of the usenet dating from 1981--probably
the most complete archive ever assembled. Google Groups has over 700
million messages! Some of the more interesting messages (and
historical messages) can be found here:
://www.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce_20.html
One other site that may be of interest to you for searching the usenet
is:
http://www.archive.org
Archive.org contains snapshots of information on the net as they
appeared at a particular moment in time. This site may or may not be
what you're looking for, but, it is interesting nonetheless.
Yahoo Groups are another breed of 'groups' from newsgroups. Because
they are not usenet/newsgroups, they are not included in Google Groups
index. Further, after investigating the Yahoo Groups website, I was
unable to find a way to search within the messages of each group. I
could search for the particular group description, but, nothing
further. Sorry.
The Usenet's future is very much as it is currently: simply larger.
The usenet has played an enormous part of people's lives and played a
part in massive amounts of human conversation. The usenet is also
heavily ingrained into the conscience of the Internet--providing the
life blood of many services, administrative information on the running
of the Internet, and postings of RFC's (Request for Comments).
Thanks again for your great question. Please don't hesitate to ask for
clarification prior to rating this answer.
Search method:
Usenet history
yahoo groups search |
