Usenet facts for kids
Usenet (pronounced "yooz-net"), or "User's Network," is a very old way for people to talk to each other online. It started way back in 1980, even before the internet as we know it today!
Imagine a giant, worldwide message board where people could share messages, ask questions, and discuss all sorts of topics. That's Usenet! Users would read and post messages, called articles or posts, into different topic areas called newsgroups. It was a bit like the online forums and bulletin boards you might know today, but much older.
A cool thing about Usenet is that it didn't have one main computer or company running everything. Instead, it was spread out across many different computers, called news servers. These servers would share messages with each other, so a message posted on one server would eventually reach all the others. This meant that no single place controlled what was shared, making it very open.
Usenet was super important in the early days of the internet. It helped create many words and ideas we still use, like "FAQ" (Frequently Asked Questions), "flame" (sending angry messages), "sockpuppet" (fake online identity), and "spam" (unwanted messages). Before the internet was common and affordable, Usenet helped people around the world talk to each other using regular phone lines.
The name Usenet comes from "users' network." The very first Usenet group was called NET.general.
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How Usenet Works
Usenet was created in 1979 and officially launched in 1980 by students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University. This was more than ten years before the World Wide Web even existed! It was one of the first ways people could communicate across computer networks.
Messages on Usenet are sorted into newsgroups, which are like folders for different topics. For example, there are groups for science (like sci.math for math or sci.physics for physics) or for general discussions (like talk.origins). When you "subscribe" to a newsgroup, your computer program, called a news client, keeps track of which messages you've read.
Most messages in a newsgroup are replies to other messages. A group of messages that are all connected to one original message is called a thread. Modern news clients show these messages grouped together, so you can easily follow a conversation. For example, in a wine-making newsgroup, someone might ask, "What's the best yeast?" and many people would reply, creating a long conversation thread.
When you post a message, it first goes to your local news server. Then, your server shares that message with other servers it's connected to. These servers then share it with their connections, and so on. This way, your message eventually gets copied to almost every Usenet server around the world. This system was designed for a time when internet connections were much slower and not always on. Many Usenet sites would only connect once or twice a day to send and receive messages in big batches, often at night when phone calls were cheaper.
Usenet messages look a lot like e-mail messages. The main difference is that Usenet messages can be read by anyone whose server carries that newsgroup. Email, on the other hand, is sent to specific people.
Today, Usenet isn't as popular as online forums, blogs, or social media. But it's still used, especially for sharing large files. You don't need to sign up with your personal information to use Usenet, and messages are stored on many different servers, so they are usually available for a long time.
News Servers and Programs
Many internet companies used to run their own news servers for their customers. If they didn't, they might offer access through another company that specialized in Usenet. In the past, the program you used to read Usenet messages was part of the server itself. But now, you use a separate program called a newsreader, which is similar to an email program but connects to Usenet servers.
Not all internet companies run news servers anymore. It can be a lot of work because of the huge amount of data involved. Some companies use special Usenet providers instead. These providers might not carry every single newsgroup, especially those used for sharing large files, which make up most of the data.
There are also special Usenet providers that offer full access to all newsgroups, especially for people whose internet company doesn't offer Usenet.
Newsreaders
Newsreaders are programs that let you read and reply to messages in newsgroups. They connect to news servers. In the early days, Usenet was mostly used on Unix computers, but soon newsreaders were available for all types of computers. Some email programs and internet software in the late 1990s and early 2000s even had newsreaders built in.
With the rise of the World Wide Web, you can now access many Usenet groups through websites, like Google Groups. This makes it easier for people to use Usenet without needing special software.
Moderated and Unmoderated Newsgroups
Some newsgroups are moderated. This means that when you send a message, it doesn't go straight to the newsgroup. Instead, it's sent to a moderator (a person or small group of people) who reviews it. The moderator decides if the message fits the rules of the newsgroup. If it does, they approve it, and then it's sent out to everyone. This helps keep discussions on topic and polite.
Most newsgroups, however, are unmoderated. In these groups, messages you send are immediately shared with everyone. This means there's no one checking messages before they appear. While this allows for very fast discussions, it also means that unmoderated groups often get a lot of spam (unwanted messages).
Usenet's History
Usenet started with experiments in 1979. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis at Duke University wanted a better way to share announcements locally. They connected with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill using special computer programs. In 1980, Usenet also connected to ARPANET, an early computer network.
Usenet grew very quickly. In its first year, 50 different places joined, including universities and research labs. Thousands of people were using it by 1983, and the number of connected computers nearly doubled by 1984. More than 100 newsgroups existed, covering everything from computers to hobbies.
In the mid-1990s, Usenet was also connected to other dial-up computer networks like Fidonet. This allowed millions of users around the world to communicate using just local phone calls. Later, a new way to send Usenet messages over the internet, called NNTP, became the main method.
Important Moments
Usenet was the first big online community. Many important things happened there before the internet became popular:
- Tim Berners-Lee announced the start of the World Wide Web.
- Linus Torvalds announced his Linux computer operating system project.
- Marc Andreessen announced the creation of the Mosaic browser, which was one of the first web browsers that could show images. This changed the web into a visual place!
Decline
Over time, Usenet's popularity for general discussions started to fade. In the late 1990s, people began using Usenet to share very large files, which took up a lot of space on servers. Internet companies started wondering why they needed to host all this data.
Many big internet providers, like AOL and Verizon, stopped offering Usenet access in the 2000s. Universities also began shutting down their Usenet servers due to low usage and high costs.
Even though it's not as widely used for discussions anymore, Usenet still exists. Some text-based newsgroups are still active, but today, it's mostly used for sharing large files between users. The basic technology behind Usenet hasn't changed much, showing how strong its original design was!
Usenet Archives
People have been saving Usenet messages for a long time. In 1995, a company called Deja News started a huge, searchable collection of Usenet posts. In 2001, Google bought this collection.
Today, Google Groups hosts a massive archive of Usenet messages going all the way back to May 1981! These old messages were donated to Google by universities and other people who had saved them.
However, Google has announced that starting in February 2024, Google Groups will no longer support new Usenet content. This means you won't be able to post new messages or subscribe to newsgroups through Google Groups, and new messages from other Usenet servers won't appear there. But you will still be able to view and search the historical messages.
Images for kids
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A visual example of the many complex steps required to prepare data to be uploaded to Usenet newsgroups. These steps must be done again in reverse to download data from Usenet.
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October 2020 screenshot showing 60 PB of usenet group data.
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The "Big Nine" hierarchies of Usenet
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Usenet traffic per day (en).svg
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