Google has released the beta version of a new and improved Google Groups. Google Groups is a collection of NEWSGROUPS, much of which stems from the USENET bulletin board service Google acquired in February 2001 which it purchased from Deja.Com.
Usenet started in 1979 at Duke University as a bulletin board system allowing a then tiny number of users to post text messages and replies that combined to form a discussion thread. Twenty five years ago this concept was so revolutionary, it formed the backbone of an interactive Net until the massive adoption of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s. Thousands of newsgroups were posted to Usenet covering virtually any topic a computer user might be interested in from social to financial to technical issues. Millions of smaller bulletin boards started forming becoming the BBS clubs that dominated the early commercial Internet and creating the first generation to identify as “netizens” or citizens of the Internet. This was the group that set the basic traditions or social norms of the Web as we know it today. From Netiquette to the open-source attitude that basic building-block information can not be “owned”, we owe our online evolution in large part to the folks who popularized Usenet. Boasting a database of documents dating back to 1981, Google Groups offers the deepest well of information from the earliest days of the Net, and being Google, makes those documents fairly easy to find. That alone is enough to generate a great deal of interest.
Google Groups has another feature which will likely prove more relevant to today’s generation of “Netizens”. Users are encouraged to start their own and participate in other news and discussion groups. Like other news-groups such as Yahoo Groups, Google is facilitating another level of information sharing for its loyal users. Starting a group is extremely simple, especially if you have already registered a Gmail account. I opened one last night as a D-I-Y SEO news and discussion board which, by the way, anyone interested is welcome to join. (http://groups-beta.google.com/group/SEO-SEM_News). Hopefully this and other tech-related groups will grow in the future based on the free-information traditions of the past.
For Internet workers in virtually any sector from programming to development to marketing, there is, or soon will be), a group that meets your interests and answers your questions. The same can be said for various interest groups from political associations to PTAs. While Google Groups will not displace established Forums, it will provide another essential, collaborative problem solving and communications tool. The feature also offers Google a few million more gigabytes of real estate for paid advertising, though AdWords do not seem to be currently displayed in the groups I’ve visited in the past few days.
For more information on Google Groups, please visit their FAQ page at:
http://www.google.com/googlegroups/about.html
Jim Hedger has written a widely read search marketing column for over five years. Co-host of Webcology on WebmasterRadio.FM, Jim is a writer and SEO consultant with Metamend Search Engine Marketing in Victoria BC.
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