The NewsDemon Blog

This year celebrates the 30^th Anniversary of Usenet. It was in 1979 that two college grad students created the foundation of what Usenet and Newsgroups have become. In recognition of its anniversary, Newsdemon.com now offers a complete History of Usenet.

Usenet is a worldwide system of discussion groups used by tens of millions of people on the internet today. Think of Usenet Newsgroups as a one-to-many teleconferencing system. The operation of Usenet is most similar to the way that the combination of e-mail AND forums work. Working much like an email/forum, a posted message/article gets posted publicly to a local group. With Usenet access, you can read and post messages (called “articles” or “posts”) at your own convenience. Allowing the user to follow these articles days, weeks and even months from the date it was posted with the ability to respond and read responses from these local groups.

The History of Usenet covers its basic origins, functionality and instructions to access newsgroups via Usenet.

Reflective over the 30 year growth that Usenet has achieved in a constantly evolving dynamic arena is unequaled to any other technology. The scope and reach Usenet has supplied to countless individuals and communities is every day increasing. More than any social network, forum or other community based technology; Usenet has remained unmoving to trends and consistent throughout.

Throughout the course of the existence of Usenet, its newsgroup communities have been responsible for the first mention of a fax machine to the first announcement of the release of the Internet that we know and love today.

The History of Usenet is a look back and a glance forward of one of the oldest – and most relevant – computer network distribution system to date.