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Network News (sometimes referred to as Usenet News) is a service comprised of several thousand electronic discussions providing users an effective way to share information with others on just about any topic.

If you're unclear about the concept of Network News, it's helpful to think about a bulletin board that you might see on campus.

Here, one might find posted messages advertising a futon for sale, asking for students to join a math study group. In the newsgroup environment, the same kind of process take place: User X may access a newsgroup on a particular topic and post a message, question, or respond to a previously posted message, and anyone accessing that newsgroup would then be able to see User X's message. 

Network News newsgroups provide this same kind of forum online, where users have access to the messages posted by all other users of that newsgroup.

Messages posted on Network News newsgroups are sent from host computer to host computer all over the world, using the network news transfer protocol. Because Network News newsgroups are located on one server, several people can read a given newsgroup message, but the host system stores only one copy of it.

Each newsgroup is a collection of messages focusing on a related theme. A newsgroup's name gives you a good idea of that group's focus, and also illustrates the hierarchical naming scheme given to newsgroups. Newsgroups with the prefix comp, for example, are for computer-related topics.

Newsgroups are one way to communicate with people on Internet which share common interests with you. The other is through an electronic discussion group. An electronic discussion is a group of persons who have come together to discuss a particular topic via e-mail. There are several methods that network users can use to participate in electronic discussions; however, the basic purpose is to bring together persons with similar interests to share information, ideas, problems, solutions, and opinions. Since an electronic discussion is conducted by e-mail, it's commonly called a mailing list.

If you find yourself interested in a topic, you can subscribe to a suitable mailing list. From then on, any message sent to the mailing list is automatically distributed as electronic mail to you-as well as to all previously subscribed members of that particular discussion. There are discussions on professional topics, vocational subjects, and topics of personal interest.

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