Yahoo Groups v.Google Groups

AdamZ

AdamZ

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Feb 24, 2005
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Montgomery County PA
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Display name:
Adam Zucker
Looking for a recommendation for a list serve. I have a large group of people whom I coordinate with ( college fraternity) for occasional reunions and life cycle events. Currently we use a cumbersome practice of email cut and pasting to get word out. I'd like to set up a list serve to make communications easier. I'm looking for easy to use and effective. Any thoughts on Google Groups v. Yahoo groups? Or any others for that matter?
 
I suspect it is a toss-up. Go create trial groups on both and play with them so you can compare their operations. Then delete the trial groups and create the "real" one on the host you've selected
 
It's 2014 right?

:)

Go with a Facebook or twitter page. Or a forum.
 
All of my yahoo groups are gone,I would go with Facebook,until they start charging.
 
Is it just one-way mass emailing that you need (that is, from you to them)? Because that can be done with Thunderbird (and I suspect most other email clients).

For more functionality, there are any number of self-hosted, open-source blog or social-networking scripts that could be used. Personally, I would prefer any of them to Yahoo!, Google, or Facebook because you wouldn't have robots sniffing through the messages for marketing reasons.

Rich
 
Henning said:
Facebook page is my thought as well.
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Except that there are some people (like me) who would rather have their fingernails and toenails torn off with a rusty pair of long-nose pliers than open a Facebook account. A self-hosted solution overcomes those concerns.

Rich
 
RJM62 said:
Except that there are some people (like me) who would rather have their fingernails and toenails torn off with a rusty pair of long-nose pliers than open a Facebook account. A self-hosted solution overcomes those concerns.

Rich
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The problem is that I doubt Adam I'd looking to communicate with one of the 7 other people in the world that shares your fear of social networks.

I joke, but like it or not, you have a very unique set of beliefs when it comes to using these life - bettering services.
 
RJM62 said:
Except that there are some people (like me) who would rather have their fingernails and toenails torn off with a rusty pair of long-nose pliers than open a Facebook account. A self-hosted solution overcomes those concerns.

Rich
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Yep, but if a self-hosted solution was in the cost, technical, and time resource abilities of the OP, this thread wouldn't exist. There is no real difference between the negative aspects of the quoted solutions of Yahoo Groups and Google Groups and Facebook, so there is no reason to disclaim Facebook as an option over the others, and since Facebook will be likelier to have the greatest amount of current participants already onboard, it provides the best Ad based solution he seeks as well as being easiest to implement.
 
SkyHog said:
The problem is that I doubt Adam I'd looking to communicate with one of the 7 other people in the world that shares your fear of social networks.

I joke, but like it or not, you have a very unique set of beliefs when it comes to using these life - bettering services.
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I don't dislike all social networks. Just the ones that happen to exist at the moment.

Rich
 
RJM62 said:
I don't dislike all social networks. Just the ones that happen to exist at the moment.

Rich
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You will hate every one of them because in all of them, we are the product being sold.
 
SkyHog said:
It's 2014 right?

:)

Go with a Facebook or twitter page. Or a forum.
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Nick, you would be surprised how many people don't have FB. With Twitter its hard to keep lists of folks who are attending events. While I have FB its actually much easier to use email for me for certain things. If I'm sitting at my desk at work my email gets pushed to me or I click send/receive and its right there to respond to. I don't have to open facebook and look for stuff. Plus the nature of this group is we have guys from 21 to 71.

RJM62 said:
Is it just one-way mass emailing that you need (that is, from you to them)? Because that can be done with Thunderbird (and I suspect most other email clients).

For more functionality, there are any number of self-hosted, open-source blog or social-networking scripts that could be used. Personally, I would prefer any of them to Yahoo!, Google, or Facebook because you wouldn't have robots sniffing through the messages for marketing reasons.

Rich
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No I need something where if I send a email all subscribers get it and if someone else sends a response or a new email all subscribers get it.
 
RJM62 said:
Exactly, Henning -- unless it's either paid or self-hosted.

Rich
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The other option is to limit what you give them to sell as what you see to be equitable to the value you receive, that's what I do. In exchange for the information I receive and communications costs I am spared, I receive some targeted ads in my news feed that take absolutely no time or effort to ignore, and occasionally I am informed of a product I find of value. To me it's far less annoying than ads on TV. Spam in my email box is far more intrusive on my time than ads on Facebook.
 
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AdamZ said:
Nick, you would be surprised how many people don't have FB. With Twitter its hard to keep lists of folks who are attending events. While I have FB its actually much easier to use email for me for certain things. If I'm sitting at my desk at work my email gets pushed to me or I click send/receive and its right there to respond to. I don't have to open facebook and look for stuff. Plus the nature of this group is we have guys from 21 to 71.



No I need something where if I send a email all subscribers get it and if someone else sends a response or a new email all subscribers get it.
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Well, pretty much any open-source blogging, forum, or social networking platform can be set up that way (although the users may have to opt-in to the email notices). There are dozens of such scripts out there, many of them quite stable and mature, and most of them free.

I know a few people who love Oxwall, but I've never tried it myself. B2evolution is a blogging platform that I have used that also could be configured quite easily to do what you want it to do. It has very fine visibility settings that would allow you to make some posts public, some members-only, etc.

There are dozens of ways you could go with this. I suggest you use your favorite search engine to search on "open-source social networking" and see what's out there. Most scripts have demos you can play with.

Rich
 
Or maybe something like this. It looks like what you're looking for, although I've never tried it myself.

Rich
 
JeffDG said:
No, that should be an "and".

If you're not paying for it, you're not the customer, you're the product.
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I agree regarding the second sentence. I use very few "free" services. I prefer paying the usually-trivial fees for paid services rather than whoring my life to a company's marketing / data-mining / spamming departments. That's why I no longer have a Yahoo! account, a YouTube account, a Google+ account, an Android phone, etc. I'm not willing to pay the price for "free" stuff.

Regarding the first sentence, however, a service doesn't have to be self-hosted to be paid, and most self-hosted services can be had for free. There's plenty of free speech / free beer stuff out there that asks only that the links back to the projects' sites be kept intact.

Rich
 
Henning said:
there is no reason to disclaim Facebook as an option over the others, and since Facebook will be likelier to have the greatest amount of current participants already onboard
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You can be added to a Google or Yahoo group with any email address, you don't need to have a Google or Yahoo account (unless they changed it).
Given that, I would say email has way more current participants than Facebook.
 
Johann said:
You can be added to a Google or Yahoo group with any email address, you don't need to have a Google or Yahoo account (unless they changed it).
Given that, I would say email has way more current participants than Facebook.
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Google groups are shady if the recipient has a gmail account and the software sniffs it out the group will require it.:mad2: That said Yahoo is worse. If everyone is on FB that is probably easiest. Yes they all suck.
 
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