By Jakob Jelling
http://www.sitetube.com
If you haven”t visited the Google Labs lately, they have
released a beta of Google Groups 2 that you may want to check
out. This is Google”s answer to Yahoo Groups, and they”ve
added some new features to make their service more useful.
For those who don”t know, such groups allow anyone to easily
and quickly start their own announcement lists and discussion
forums. There is no need to install scripts or anything else
on a web site, and no technical knowledge beyond email and
posting to a discussion board is needed. If you want, you can
use Google Groups to post to and read Usenet postings as
well.
Of course, nothing is truly free, and Google Groups is no
different. In exchange for making the technology available to
host your group, Google displays relevant text ads on your
group”s home page on Google. “Relevant” is determined by the
content of your Google Group discussions. This is the same
type of technology used by Google to display AdSense
advertising on web sites and relevant text advertising on
their free Gmail email service.
The process to create a group is fast and painless. Just
create your group”s name and email address, and invite your
members to join. You are able to make your group either
public or private, and Google has provided a new interface so
that you can see your group”s postings sorted any of several
different ways. The Beta 2 Google Groups also features
dynamic conversations, with both Usenet and mailing list
postings created within 10 seconds, and indexed within 10
minutes from post.
Families, old college running buddies, online communities,
and many others may find benefit in using Google Groups, and
the Beta 2 release is worth a try.
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