Yahoo Groups
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Type of site
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Internet forums electronic mailing lists |
|---|---|
| Owner | Yahoo! |
| Created by | Yahoo! |
| Website | groups.yahoo.com |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Launched | 1998 |
| Current status | Active |
Yahoo! Groups is one of the world’s largest collections of online discussion boards. The term Groups refers to Internet communication which is a hybrid between an electronic mailing list and a threaded Internet forum, in other words, Group messages can be read and posted by e-mail or on the Group's webpage like a web forum. In addition, members can choose whether to receive individual, daily digest or Special Delivery e-mails, or simply read Group posts on the Group's Web site. Groups can be created with public or member-only access. Some Groups are simply announcement bulletin boards, to which only the Group moderators can post, while others are discussion forums.
It is not necessary to register with Yahoo! in order to participate in Yahoo! Groups. The basic mailing list functionality is available to any e-mail address, but a Yahoo! ID is required to access most other features.
Despite their popularity Yahoo! Groups have been called "a goldmine... Yahoo! has never cashed in on". As of 2013, Hari Vasudev oversees Yahoo Groups and Yahoo! Answers.
As well as providing e-mail relaying and archiving facilities for the many Groups it hosts, the Yahoo! Groups service provides additional features for each Group web site, such as a homepage, message archive, polls, calendar announcements, files, photos, database functions, and bookmarks.
Each new group created at Yahoo! Groups allows the creator (group owner) to have several features attached to the group. Some of the features can be selected for "off", moderator, members, public. Here is the complete list of possible group features:
In 2006, Yahoo! discontinued the chat feature in Yahoo! Groups On February 1, 2011 Yahoo! Groups launched a beta version of Group Chat.
The current Yahoo! Groups Directory organizes groups in these main categories:
There is a Yahoo! Groups search box available at the Yahoo! Groups homepage. The search function currently provides these options for sorting the results by:
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