Newsgroups are Internet discussion forums where groups of users with the same interests gather to talk about everything from software to comic books to politics. These forums can be read by anyone who views the group unlike e-mail messages which are only for the recipient to see. Newsgroups are worldwide with users from all corners of the Internet.
In order to view messages in newsgroups, you will need a newsreader program. The newsreader lets you download messages from a news server. Internet service providers (ISPs) offer access to news servers for use by their customers with a variety of packages. These servers will contain thousands of groups covering a wide variety of topics. Some news servers have specialized topics, such as news about specific technologies or information related to particular industries or organizations.
Users read and post messages to one or more newsgroup categories. Usenet was created in a time when the bandwidth of the Internet was very limited, and newsgroups were designed to be text only. More recently, users were able to attach images and other files to postings, but in general, newsgroups remain more text-based than binary.
Messages are posted to newsgroups, which look like folders in newsreader software. When a user connects to a particular newsgroup, all the messages posted to this newsgroup are downloaded to the newsreader software.
There are thousands of different newsgroups, each of the groups has a folder with messages shown in the order that they were posted. Dedicated newsreader software provides more options to search and filter postings.
Newsgroups remain very popular for a number of reasons. First, it is very easy to participate and contribute to newsgroups or even to create your own. Second, the information contained in newsgroups is not located on a central server or controlled by one particular organization or company - for some people, they don't want to be controlled when surfing the internet.