Yahoo! Groups
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Groups is a service from Yahoo! that provides electronic mailing lists. Over the years, Yahoo! bought several other mailing list providers, including the popular eGroups, and combined them with Yahoo! Clubs into one system. Yahoo! Groups is now the most popular and best-known provider of electronic mailing lists.[citation needed] Its main competitor is Google Groups.
As well as providing e-mail relaying and archiving facilities for the many lists it hosts, the Yahoo! Groups service provides additional functions on the web site, such as voting and calendar systems and file uploading. The basic mailing list functionality used to be available to any e-mail address, but now a Yahoo! ID is required.
Yahoo! Groups operate as both electronic mailing lists and Internet forums. Group messages can be posted and read by e-mail or on the Group homepage, like a forum. Members can choose whether to receive individual e-mails or daily digest e-mails, or to read the posts at the web site. Some Groups are simply announcement lists, to which only the Group moderators can post, while others are discussion lists.
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[edit] History
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Yahoo! Groups was launched in 1998 as a logical extension of services that had already been developed by Yahoo - message boards, calendars, profiles. Unlike previous Yahoo products, this product was designed to allow much deeper levels of user control over creation, membership and overall direction of communities. Development was led by Doug Hirsch (product management) and Matt Jackson (lead engineer), both of whom have since left the company.
Yahoo! Groups quickly grew to be one of the largest traffic-generating products within the Yahoo! network of services; even today the site is typically one of the Top 5 page-view generating sites across the Yahoo network.
In 1999, Yahoo acquired eGroups.com, one of the most popular mailing list products at the time. About 8 months later, Yahoo merged the eGroups.com functionality with Yahoo Groups, resulting in some complaints from users of both services.
Yahoo Groups languished without significant new development between 2000 and 2005. In 2005, a revived ability to generate revenue through targeted search-related advertising resulted in renewed interest in the product, which has slowly received new features since then.
[edit] Feature list
- Web Tools selectable for Off, Admin, Members, Public (not all tools).
- BBS: Post by form or member email account. Distributed by selectable option to the members, and archived in the group archive. No edit function except delete.
- Photo album (30MB): Organized into album/thumbnail structure.
- File storage (20MB): Capable of storing any file format.
- Link directory: Options for folders, text labels for each link.
- Poll: Members can created multiple-choice polls, including various options for ID display.
- Member list: Scroll of registered member profiles, and the basics of the information they provide.
- Calendar: Scheduling system for clubs with regular events.
- Promote: HTML box for website display (to join a group).
- Administration Owner/Managers (who can do post approval)
- Invite: to invite more members by email.
- Management of members (approve new members, delete members).
- Options: Edit of the group homepage display text etc.
- Post/Picture approval: It is possible to switch to strict moderation if required.
- Web tools management: Options are Off, Public, Members, Administrators.
As of Spring 2006, Yahoo! has discontinued the chat feature in Yahoo! Groups.
[edit] Registration
New users are required to register with Yahoo! Groups for membership and can join groups with approval by the Group moderator. A Group receives a web address and an e-mail address when it is created, and can be listed in one of the Yahoo! Group directory categories if desired. It is also possible to switch on an "adult content" warning, which must be agreed to each time a member visits the Group.
