"Usenet" is the collective name for all newsgroups. For whatever reason, the words "news" and "group" are usually run together as one word. I rarely see the term Usenet used but apparently it's still the official umbrella term for newsgroups.

Whatever you call it, or them, it's a large bulletin board system. With tens of thousands of groups, each one hosting a different topic, it may be the largest body of collective reasoning in the world.

You might see the term Internet Discussion Groups (IDG) somewhere. For a while in the late 90s, it looked like IDG was being considered to replace the terms newsgroups and Usenet. As far as I can gather the term IDG has died, even though it's a better name, because there really is little news to be found in newsgroups.

Postings (also called articles) are like index cards, and they're posted on newsgroups, which are the electronic equivalent of bulletin boards. Each bulletin board is devoted to a different topic. A posting stays up for a long time. Days, weeks. Other people can add related, follow-up postings and that's where you find the interaction and discussion.

Unlike most other stuff on the internet, you don't necessarily use a web browser to view newsgroups, though some browsers display them. A web page can contain a link to a newsgroup, but in many cases if you click the link a news reader (if you have one) opens. If you're using Windows 98 or later, you have a newsgroup reader in the form of Outlook Express, an email/news reader included with the operating system. There are other news readers out there; more about that later.

For some, newsgroups are a way to discuss interests and passions with thousands of people worldwide. For others, they're a free and easy way to electronically publish poems, stories, song lyrics, speeches, opinions, advice, gossip, rants and raves, computer sourcecode, and just about anything else you can think of. For still others, they're a great resource for answers to problems and questions, or to uncover areas where research is needed. Newsgroups constitute an electronic community of people. "Regulars" can become friends or colleagues, though they never meet face-to-face.

Founded as the Usenet electronic bulletin board about 1980, newsgroups share the Internet's philosophy of openness: no one is "in charge" of them. Newsgroups are maintained on special "news servers" all around the world, using a series of Internet standards and protocols. News server sites pass content back and forth, enabling anyone to read the content online using newsreader software.