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AOL To Discontinue LISTSERV

Posted by Soulskill on from the yes-aol-still-exists dept.

alphadogg writes "On December 1, AOL will shut down its free LISTSERV-based mailing-list hosting operations, the company has told mailing list administrators. 'If your list is still actively used, please make arrangements to find another service prior to the shutdown date and notify your list members of the transition details,' an email notice sent out by AOL stated. At the peak of the service's popularity in the late 1990s, AOL was the third-largest provider of mailing lists, serving more than a million users."

4 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. This is huge news! by MyLongNickName · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I didn't even know AOL was still in business...

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    1. Re:This is huge news! by acidradio · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Young whipper-snappers won't and don't understand the significance of ^H either.

    2. Re:This is huge news! by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes. And USENET was just like web fora, except with all your forums under one powerful interface. And IRC was just like IM, except, well no IRC is exactly like IM.

      Why did we need to invent twitter, web fora, and IM when we had Listserv, USENET, and IRC?

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    3. Re:This is huge news! by Zoxed · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > Why did we need to invent twitter, web fora, and IM when we had Listserv, USENET, and IRC?

      The few USENET groups I used to follow basically died due to trolls.
      The "real" users migrated to Web Forums, sometimes funded by advertising, which usually have some degree of Moderation.

      But I really miss the functionality associated with the single interface to all USENET groups, (although you could of course chose *which* tool to use).
      Some people tried to write plugins that converted web forums to pseudo USENET groups, but I think they all failed (I had tried one ages ago to read Slashdot in Xemacs/Gnus.)