What's a Newsgroup?

Why are they Valuable?

Where are these Newsgroups?

How do I search for Newsgroups?

What if I can't find any Newsgroups for the industry I am working on?

What's a Newsgroup?   top

Internet Newsgroups are text based discussions on the Internet that are based on a particular topic. Once you access a newsgroup you can read the different discussion headings for the various messages, then select the messages you would like to read. After reading a message you can respond to that particular message or post  message on a new topic.  You can send your message directly to the authors e-mail address, to the newsgroup or both. You can even post the same message to more than one newsgroup at a time. Your message is only posted to the newsgroup and does not end up in people's e-mail.  People can only view your message if they connect to the newsgroup you have posted to.

Why are they Valuable?   top

There are thousands of newsgroups out there on almost any topic imaginable. There may also be thousands of users of a particular newsgroup. Most newsgroups are used for non-business discussions but there are many newsgroups that are highly technical for engineers and scientists or targeted toward business professionals. You may have trouble getting a hold of someone in the R&D department at Hewlett Packard by calling on the phone. But you may find that you can contact the head of R&D by joining a newsgroup discussion he or she subscribes to and posting a message about a technology. They may choose to stay anonymous on the newsgroup but when they see a technology they like they will contact you directly through the e-mail and reveal their company and title.

You may also receive valuable feedback from technical people who know their industry and technology well. They will offer advice on who you should go to and where to look. They can also tell you if your technology is a jewel or not. This feedback must be taken with a grain of salt though because it is often difficult to determine a person's qualifications over the Internet. Try to get some background information, company name, and position if possible with anyone you deal with so that their opinions can be qualified.

Where are these Newsgroups?  top

Most ISPs subscribe to a general set of newsgroups which are part of your Internet connection services.  Talk to your ISP to find out how you can can get connected. You can link into these newsgroups through Telnet or through the Netscape or Internet Explorer Newsreaders. You have to configure your newsgroup options in order to get it to work.  The only difficult part is discovering the name of your NNTP server.  The rest is intuitive.  Your IS department should know how to give you access to newsgroups.

There are also some HTML based newsgroups that are available through web sites. These are not listed with the typical Usenet style newsgroups so the only way you can find them is by discovering them during your online search.

How do I search for Newsgroups?  top

Newsgroup Search Strategy

A.  Using Outlook Express

1. Get Outlook Express setup for reading news
2. Hit the newsgroup button and type in keywords to see which newsgroup names contain them
3. Begin searching by industry then go to keywords associated with the technology
4. Subscribe to and read through the messages of the newsgroups you think may be applicable
5. Use your judgment to decide which newsgroups are applicable to the industry you're trying to reach

Note: Not every newsgroup that contains "autos" will have to do with the Auto industry.  Use common sense to judge whether the people reading a newsgroup would have an interest in the technology you're working with.

B.  Usenet & Newsgroup Directory (http://www.cyberfiber.com/ )

The Newsgroup directory is just a listing of all available newsgroups. The best way to access this directory is to log in to the news servers. This list will contain over 100,000 newsgroups, closer to 110,000 to be exact. New groups are being added all the time and so are users of Usenet. What once was a small group of universities sharing information and articles, has now become a large global community of thousands of networks and millions of individual users working together to pass information and articles.

1. Type in keywords to find newsgroups that contain the words in their name
2. Begin searching by industry then go to keywords associated with the technology
3. You can also use this search engine to look up descriptions on newsgroups you found with Outlook Express
4. Use your judgement to decide which newsgroups are applicable to the industry you're trying to reach

C.  Using DejaNews (http://groups.google.com/) 

Google Groups is an archive of past messages posted to newsgroups. This allows you to search by keywords to see which newsgroups have referred to your industry or technology in the past. It will also allow you to copy down the persons e-mail address who wrote the message so you can contact them directly.

1. Type in key phrases with "Quotes" around them (exact match) to search for discussions about your industry and technology
2. Copy down the e-mail addresses of people you find who seem to have a lot of knowledge in the industry
3. You may also discover additional newsgroups that are applicable to your industry

D.  Use The Same Techniques With These Other Tools

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What if I can't find any Newsgroups for the industry I am working on?

You may run into a situation where a particular industry you are trying to contact is not currently using newsgroups.  If this occurs you can go online and get e-mail addresses from industry directories or go to individual web pages to pull e-mail addresses.  If you can get 50 to 100 e-mails in a reasonable period of time use that approach.  If not, you can generate a list of companies for that industry and use their fax numbers to accomplish the same task.   You can get a listing for companies in a particular line of business by going to the Thomas Register of American Manufacturers (http://www2.thomasregister.com/ )

Or preferably,  If you have access to pay for resources such as CorpTech, you can generate a list of companies based on SIC codes.  Often these list include company e-mail addresses.

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