Bulletin boards and Newsgroups

Bulletin boards are a place on the Internet that allow you to post small notices, adverts and messages, as well as uploading and downloading files and images that are there. It has been around since 1978 and there are many bulletin boards being used for discussion forums, which allows individuals to talk about a topic of interest which an online community of people can add to and develop further. Bulletining boards are even used to find free or inexpensive software products.

Newsgroups are considered part of the "old Internet and are very similar to bulletin boards: they allow people to read and post messages into a hierarchy of subjects using an online browser such as Google Groups. The name is made up of two+ parts, separated by full stops and these parts organise the hierarchies. The two common hierachies are most relevant to the topic you searched and the most viewed groups.

There are many different parts to add to your search topic to find the revelant information:
atl. = any conceivable topic
biz. = business, products,services, reviews
comp. hardware, software, consumer information
humanities. = fine art, literature, philosophy
misc. employment, health and much more
news. = information about Usenet, News
rec. = games, hobbies and sport
sci. = applied science, social science
soc. = social issues, culture
talk. = current issues and debates

I used Google Groups to look at the groups for the topic "digital divide" and I found that whilst using Google Groups, some of the discussions did not give the information about the topic, but simply redirected you to a new website about the topic. I thought this was a good way of giving credit to websites, instead of just copying the information across to the group (maybe without referencing the site), but it complicates finding the information and often the website links had been deleted or moved/changed, so the information wasn't accessible. When looking at the discussion, your key words are highlighted for quickly finding the relevant information which allows quick and easy browsing, and most of the discussions aren't that long so you can quickly skim the information. However Google Groups encounters many errors whilst trying to locate discussions which is frustrating when trying to find information, as a lot of the groups that come up, are not available.