In 1979, two college grad students had created a system in which its purpose was to create the first online based community. Originally created primarily for Universities and Colleges, After the first official Announcement of USENET, it was quickly adapted by the online masses and still thrives upon its community base of sharing, discovering and exploring practically any particular subject matter imaginable.
Unlike the once popular peer-to-peer networks, Usenet is not a file-sharing program and does not rely on one to share in order to access the vast newsgroup communities.
The Inner Workings 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 the ultimate social network.
The operation of Usenet is most similar to the way that the combination of E-mail, forums and social networks work. Working much like an email/forum, a posted message/article gets posted publicly to a local group (AKA Newsgroups).
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.
USENET BENEFITS
Newsgroups are all unique and cover any topic and group imaginable. New newsgroups are being added constantly as well, allowing specialty groups access to share and be part of communities that can share information freely and completely uncensored from any network authority.
Usenet is a system of news servers where you can exchange virtually anything that can be transmitted between computers.
Usenet Capabilities
Just reading articles/posts are not the only thing Usenet does. With hardly any restrictions on actual “space”,Usenet is extremely popular in being able to post enormous files to pass along to public domains. Universities find the most convenience with this as this allows them to post large size files to be shared within a community. As an example:
Issue
Imagine an online text-book on quantum physics. The file itself could exceed anywhere from 100-200mb in size! How would you go about sending the file to 100+ online students? E-mail would be entirely too slow, and chances are you’d get fired just for trying. Posting it on your University’s internet site would not only bog the site down, but is not feasible for a number of reasons.
Solution
USENET! With Usenet, all you would have to do is post it on an intended newsgroup, let your students know where to look, and they can download the file at there own convenience. Additionally, you can track if there are any responses and questions students potentially have.
NEWSGROUPS
Newsgroups are the general topics of Usenet. Although millions of them exist, only a few thousand are truly popular. ”Popular” Usenet Newsgroups exchange virtually anything and everything you can imagine. From the studies of science to general discussions and postings of Japanimation films, Newsgroups are a vital part of cyberspace communication as we know it.
Topics are by the millions with Newsgroups. Everyday, these groups grow in size and popularity. Most of the major newsgroups have what is called a “charter”. A Charter specifies the topics of discussion and assigns a moderator if there is a demand or if its necessary for the particular group. This is most prominent with usenet newsgroups that share a lot of articles and files, otherwise known as “posts”.
Here, the example is again made about sharing a large file amongst a public community. In this example, it could very well be a musician who wishes to share his collection of his work with the public. Rather than hosting the files on his own site, he can post these songs on a particular usenet newsgroup and not only have his files downloaded and played by this group, but respond about they’re thoughts on the music. This allows the musician to have instantaneous access to this group no matter where he or she is without any time restraints. The posts and its replies would reside on the newsgroup for weeks to months.
Consider newsgroups as a large bulletin board for the masses.They’re formed by groups of people swapping information on a variety of subjects. Where users can share ideas, ask questions and share practically anything.
GETTING STARTED
Until recently, ISP’s were known to give you unlimited, uncensored newsgroup access news servers as part of your internet access package. Nowadays more companies are dropping there newsgroup service due to the overwhelming costs it takes to maintain it. Couple that with the popularity Usenet has recently been having, and you can sympathize with there situation.
USENET BENEFITS
Newsgroups are all unique and cover any topic and group imaginable. New newsgroups are being added constantly as well, allowing specialty groups access to share and be part of communities that can share information freely and completely uncensored from any network authority.
Usenet is a system of news servers where you can exchange virtually anything that can be transmitted between computers.