Participation in yahoo groups
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 CLUB
Yahoo! Clubs was launched in 1998 as a logical extension of services that had already been developed by Yahoo - message. Unlike previous Yahoo products, this product was designed to allow much deeper levels of user control over creation, membership and overall direction of communities. Development was led by Doug Hirsch (product management) and Matt Jackson (lead engineer). Yahoo! Clubs quickly grew to be one of the largest traffic-generating products within the Yahoo! network of services.
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.
In August 2000, Yahoo acquired eGroups.com, one of the most popular group collaboration products at the time. About 8 months later, the new Yahoo! Groups product was launched which merged eGroups.com and Yahoo! Clubs. The resulting product is typically one of the Top 5 page-view generating sites across the Yahoo network.
Yahoo! Groups functionality remained static between 2000 and 2005.
In 2006 Yahoo Groups introduced an option to add a Yahoo! Answers module at the bottom of group homepages. Group managers can control whether the module will appear on their Group homepage and if so, the type of Yahoo! Answers category to be included. However, this option has been removed in the Groups Remodel of 2010.
Advanced Message Search
Also in 2006, Yahoo Groups introduced an improved message search that includes an Advanced Message Search allowing a search by on any combination of message date, author, subject and message body. The Advanced Message Search also disappeared in Groups Remodel of 2010
YAHOO PROFILE
On October 2008 Yahoo introduced a new universal Yahoo! Profile replacing the Group profiles and Yahoo! 360 Profiles, both of which were utilized by Group members prior to this introduction. The use of "adult" profiles was discontinued at that time. [8] On June 7, 2010 Yahoo! announced that the universal Yahoo Profile has been replaced by Yahoo! Pulse.[9]
The new feature was announced on Nov 19, 2009. [11] It allows Group managers to post messages to their Group from a Group Owner’s email address. Before this new feature was introduced, Group managers had to use their personal address even when making official Group announcements.
Groups Update Email
The Groups Update Email feature was introduced In 2010. It allows YG members to see on a daily basis what items have been added to the Groups they subscribe to. This enables YG members to check in one email all the updates that occur every twenty four hours in all their Groups.
Yahoo Groups remodel
In September 2010 a major facelift was rolled out, making Yahoo groups look very similar to Facebook. However, several key features were removed, notably the ability to respond to the sender of a message, rather than the group, and the ability to use a Rich Text editor. The first of these changes would dramatically impact the ability of many groups such as Freegle and Freecycle to keep functioning, affecting over 9 million users worldwide. The second of these changes would affect may RPG groups and similar, as they often use different colours to indicate story threads, or individual authors.
In addition, more destroyed features: Messages – Expanded (to read messages in chronological order from top to bottom); message history grid (table of quantities of messages for each month, with rows for years and columns for months) on the Home page for prospective members; quoting in replies via group website (members who receive messages or digests via email will have no idea what the member who posted on group website replied to); option of viewing ASCII art, computer programs and tables in plain text messages with fixed width font; View Source in Messages for ordinary members (necessary for tracking trolls by members and moderators of other groups); compatibility with browsers not supporting advanced JavaScript including browsers in mobile phones, PDA and like. Problems for blind users anticipated.
Yahoo! Groups Directory
The current Yahoo! Groups Directory organizes groups in these main categories:
Animals
Business & Finance
Computers & Internet Games
Government & Politics
Health & Wellness
Hobbies & Crafts
Music
Recreation & Sports Regional
Religion & Beliefs
Romance & Relationships
Schools & Education
Science
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
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.
Feature list
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 embers).
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.
Site statistics
In August 2008 YG staff reported 113 million users, 9 million Groups, and availability in 22 languages.
The web analytics website Quantcast reported around 915 thousand unique visitors to the YG website(US) daily in July 2010. This number has been trending down since 2007, but does not include YG members who access the Groups site via email.
In Sept 2010 at its "Product Runway" event, Yahoo told reporters that Yahoo Groups has 115 million Group members and 10 million Yahoo Groups
What information is visible to others when I participate in Yahoo! Groups?
By default, the only information that is shared with other users on the Yahoo! Groups website is your Yahoo! ID (except for moderators will also have access to your email address on the “Manage Members Page”).
Additional information will be shared with group members in the following circumstances:
• When you post a message to the group, group member who receive messages via email will see your entire email address in the "From:" field (just as if you were sending them email directly).
• If your Yahoo! Pulse profile is set to share information, members who click on your Yahoo! ID will be taken to your Yahoo! Pulse page. Depending on your Yahoo! Pulse settings, additional information may be accessible to group members. For more information on controlling your Yahoo! Pulse profile, please visit this help page. If you would like to use Yahoo! Pulse – but don’t want to share that profile with group members, you can always set up an alias.
• If you are an email-only member of a group, your email address will always be displayed rather than your Yahoo! ID. Members of the group will only see part of your email address (e.g. john@company.com will simply display as “john@”), but moderators will see the entire address. If you have a Yahoo! ID that is your entire email address (which is true for many users with Ymail and Rocketmail addresses, as well as users with “Yahoo! Broadband Partner” email addresses like SBCGlobal, BTInternet, and Rogers), this email address will display with the same rules as described above.
Note: If you join a group that allows members to hide their email address and you choose to do so, then posting a message from the group website will NOT reveal your email address (either in emails or on the web) and moderators will not be able to see your email on the Manage Members page. However, this “hiding” will not work for any user whose email address is their Yahoo! ID.
THE END
COMPILED BY
RAJSHREE KARPE
II YR. B.Ed
