Yahoo! Groups

Type of site	Internet forums electronic mailing lists
Owner	Yahoo!
Created by	Yahoo!
URL	groups.yahoo.com
Commercial	Yes
Launched	January 30, 2001; 23 years ago (2001-01-30)[1]
Current status	Active

Yahoo! Groups is one of the world's largest collections of online discussion boards. The term Groups refers to Internet communication which is a hybrid between an electronic mailing list and a threaded Internet forum, in other words, Group messages can be read and posted by e-mail or on the Group's webpage like a web forum. In addition, members can choose whether to receive individual, daily digest or Special Delivery e-mails, or simply read Group posts on the Group's Web site. Groups can be created with public or member-only access. Some Groups are simply announcement bulletin boards, to which only the Group moderators can post, while others are discussion forums.

It is not necessary to register with Yahoo! in order to participate in Yahoo! Groups. The basic mailing list functionality is available to any e-mail address, but a Yahoo! ID is required to access most other features.

Yahoo says that, effective December 14th, it will be deleting all content that has been posted to Yahoo Groups.

Features offered by Yahoo! Groups

As well as providing e-mail relaying and archiving facilities for the many Groups it hosts, the Yahoo! Groups service provides additional features for each Group web site, such as a homepage, message archive, polls, calendar announcements, files, photos, database functions, and bookmarks.

Each new group created at Yahoo! Groups allows the creator (group owner) to have several features attached to the group. Some of the features can be selected for "off", moderator, members, public. Here is the complete list of possible group features:

• Group members
  • Messages: Post via web or email to group. No edit function except delete.
  • Photo album (100GB): Organized into album/thumbnail structure.
  • File storage (100MB): Capable of storing any file format.
  • Link directory: Options for folders, text labels for each link.
  • Poll: Members can create multiple-choice polls, including various options for ID display.
  • Database: Up to ten tables, each with up to one thousand rows and up to ten columns.
  • Member list: Scroll of registered member profiles, and the basics of the information they provide.
  • Calendar: Scheduling system for clubs with regular events.
  • Promote: HTML box for website display (to join a group).
• Administration (owners or managers who can do post approval)
  • Invite: to invite more members by email.
  • Management of members (approve new members, delete members).
  • Management of messages (approve new messages, delete messages).
  • Options: Edit of the group homepage display text etc.
  • Post approval: It is possible to switch to strict moderation if required.
  • Web tools management: Options are off, public, members, administrators.

In 2006, Yahoo! discontinued the chat feature in Yahoo! Groups ^[2] On February 1, 2011 Yahoo! Groups launched a beta version of Group Chat.^[3]

Yahoo! Groups Directory

The current Yahoo! Groups Directory organizes groups in these main categories:

There is a Yahoo! Groups search box available at the Yahoo! Groups homepage. The search function currently provides these options for sorting the results by:

• Best match
• Number of group members
• Latest activity
• Age of group (newest first)
• Age of group (oldest first)

Joining a group or directory listing

A group receives a web address and an email address when it is created and can be listed in one of the Yahoo! Groups directory categories if desired. Groups listed in the Yahoo! Groups directory can also be found via a Yahoo! Groups search.

New members can join groups directly, or may be invited by a moderator to join. Some groups have restricted memberships, which allow group managers to accept or reject new members. Some groups are closed and allow only members who have been directly invited by a group manager to join the group.

Yahoo! Groups also includes so-called adult groups, however, these groups are not publicly listed in the Yahoo! Groups directory and access to them is restricted. People wanting to visit an adult group receive an "adult content" warning and must agree to it each time a member visits the group.

History

Yahoo! Groups was launched in early 2001 as an integration of technology from eGroups.com and community groups from both eGroups.com and Yahoo! Clubs.

Yahoo! Clubs was launched in 1998 as an extension of services developed by Yahoo! Message. In August 2000,^[4][5] Yahoo acquired eGroups.com In 2001 Yahoo! deleted adult groups from its search directory, making it very difficult to locate Yahoo! groups with adult content. The Groups Updates Email feature was introduced In 2010. It summarizes all the updates that occur every twenty four hours in all their Groups in a single email.

In September 2010 a major facelift was rolled out, making Yahoo! Groups look very similar to Facebook.

In December, Yahoo! Groups Japan emailed its users and posted a notice on its homepage to announce that its service, which commenced in February 2004, would be closing on May 28, 2014.^[6]

In October 2019, Yahoo announced that starting December 14, 2019 all content that has been posted to Yahoo Groups will be deleted ("Yahoo! Groups would no longer host user created content on its sites"). New content was blocked after October 21, 2019^[7][8] (this date was later amended to October 28, 2019).^[9]

Once the old content is deleted, all you’ll be able to do on Yahoo Groups is browse the groups directory, request to be invited to one, and, if you’re in a group, email that group.^[10][11]

Criticism and controversy

On August 31, 2010, Yahoo! Groups started rolling out a major software change.^[12] This change was denounced by a large number of users.^[13] The remodel was completely abandoned on January 12, 2011.^[14]

According to a September 9, 2013 Reuters article "Americans use the Internet to abandon children adopted from overseas", Yahoo! and Facebook groups were being used by parents to advertise unwanted children for "private re-homing", illegally and without government regulation. Yahoo! immediately closed down the forums that Reuters brought to their attention, while Facebook did not.^[15]

Site statistics

In August 2008 Y!G staff reported 113 million users, nine million Groups, and availability in 22 languages.^[16]

The web analytics website Quantcast reported around 915 thousand unique visitors to the Y!G website (US) daily in July 2010. In January 2011 this number increased to 933 thousand unique visitors daily. This number does not include Y!G members who access the Groups site via email.^[17]

In September 2010 at its "Product Runway" event, Yahoo! told reporters that Yahoo! Groups has 115 million group members and 10 million Yahoo! Groups.^[18]