- Usenet is an abbreviation of User Network, and essentially works as a bulletin board system (BBS) on a global scale. It was created in 1979 by graduate students at Duke University and the University of North Carolina (UNC), according to the book "Encyclopedia of New Media: An Essential Reference to Communication and Technology." Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis headed the joint project by connecting Duke and UNC departmental computers via phone lines.
- Truscott and Ellis utilized the Unix version 7 operating system and a communications protocol called Unix-to-Unix Copy, or UUCP. The protocol was first developed by Bell Laboratories in 1977 as a package of programs to transfer files over dial-up telephone links in wide area networks, according to the book "Linux Network Administrator's Guide." Traffic at the burgeoning network was initially handled by shell scripts, which are like smaller, slower versions of full-fledged programs.
- Another pair of graduate students, Steve Bellovin and Steve Daniel, constructed and modified the first version of a full-fledged news software, dubbed "A News." Because "A News" was not designed to handle more than a handful of articles per day, the software was rewritten by Mark Horton and Matt Glickman, who called it the "B" release or "B News." A subsequent rewrite, called "C News," was released by Geoff Collyer and Henry Spenser in 1987. The new version increased article-speed processing and improved the overall reliability of the system.
- During the early years of Usenet, all of the Usenet software releases still relied on UUCP. In order to enable efficient news transfers over networks using TCP/IP--the most common protocol used on the World Wide Web--a new method was required. This resulted in the Network News Transfer Protocol, or NTTP, which was introduced in 1986. This protocol essentially enabled newsreaders to operate on local area networks (LANs) and on the Internet.
- Further advances in Usenet included the arrival of News Overview, a database that stored the headers of news articles for easier sorting, in 1992. An alternative package called Internet News or INN also expanded the capabilities of NTTP, while other products like FNEWS and ANU-NEWS improved Usenet features. Early dedicated newsreader software programs included Pine, Hypernews, Nuntius and WinVN.
- Since the early days of Usenet, other technologies like email and chat rooms have overtaken Usenet's central role on the Internet. Despite this, newsgroups still play an important role, and constitute a key aspect of the World Wide Web as we now know it. In fact, the first time the World Wide Web (WWW) was actually discussed publicly was through Usenet, when WWW inventor Tim Berners-Lee announced its launch through the alt.hypertext newsgroup in 1991. As of 2010, Usenet's biggest exposure comes from Google, which purchased the biggest archive of Usenet news in 2001 and still provides access to newsgroups via its Google Groups service.
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