Googlegroups – E-Groups Made Better

Who here remembers e-groups? Back in the mid-1990’s egroups.com was the mass-mailing list application of choice among online friends with same interests, classes, schools, organizations, and even professional groups. What was quite difficult to accomplish on newsgroups was made easier via email, since most people go online for email, anyway, and joining the conversation is as easy as subscribing and replying to messages.

Then Yahoo! acquired egroups, and turned it into Yahoogroups. Pretty soon, e-groups services were integrated with My Yahoo! and Yahoo! Mail. Everything works seamlessly, for as long as you have one general Yahoo! account under which you sign into all these services.

Google had its own turn, albeit with its own offering, Googlegroups, probably not half as popular as Yahoogroups. Still, it’s a good alternative, especially for those who would rather not have big advertisements popping up all over the interface.

Here’s how you can get started with Google groups.

First, you need a Google account–Gmail will suffice–for managing your groups and your subscriptions. If you’re already logged in, it’s just a matter of entering www.googlegroups.com on your browser’s URL field. If you still have to sign in or create a Google account, then the site will say so.

At this point, you may already search for interesting keywords or topics being discussed in existing groups or even older newsgroup-type threads. You can also create your own googlegroup by keying in your email address, the intended group email address and a welcome message.

The pros

What I like about Googlegroups is that instead of the per-message view, like with other email group services, it organizes messages by subject thread, very much like its cousin, the ever-popular Gmail. So this means you won’t get lost in the discussion because everything’s presented in a clean threaded format (unlike nested threads that some newsgroups use).

Also, the interface is AJAX, so you won’t have to refresh and reload your browser everytime you post a message or respond to another post.

The cons

Unlike, say, Yahoogroups, Googlegroups is still limited in functionality. For instance, you cannot impose moderation for first-time posters only. It has to be all or nothing. Also, you cannot save files, photos, nor create databases. It’s just your basic email and messages affair.

However, for people who want to exchange ideas and discussions, and where email is the preferred method of communication (not blogs, websites, or wikis), Googlegroups would be a simple enough tool to use. This is especially good if you already have a Gmail account, which is easily integrated into Googlegroups.