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Created in 1979, long before the World Wide Web, Usenet (also known as News and NetNews) is a global collection of forums called newsgroups that are accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. With thousands of discussion forums concerning almost every topic imaginable, it has become a giant interactive distributed repository for the thoughts and ideas of thousands of people.
The threaded discussion forum structure popularized by this network has become the cornerstone of countless digital conversations everywhere. Usenet is important enough that Google, the popular search engine, created a completely separate database from the web pages database called Google Groups for searching Usenet posts. Almost every modern computer system comes bundled with software such as Outlook Express or Mozilla Thunderbird that allow users to access Usenet. To access these forums, users will also need to connect to a server called a newsserver which exchanges its content with other newservers, making Usenet a global, decentralized network. Some ISPs have their own news servers, but there are also free, public servers run by volunteers. Finally, it is possible to subscribe to professional Usenet providers who offer longer retention rates and access to binary newsgroups. Better stated, Usenet is perhaps the greatest archivable waystation for ideas that has ever existed.
Although it was originally created to exchange text messages, this network can also be used for file sharing if the news server relays the so-called binary newsgroups, mainly in the alt.binaries hierarchy. In this case, very often a different set of software than those stated above will be necessary.
For a collection of useful links on Usenet, the Open Directory Project's relevant category may be useful.
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