Deja News

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Deja News (long form: Deja News Research Service , briefly often contracted Deja or Dejanews ) from 1995 to 2001, a site for research of Usenet -Artikeln on an archive of most former text newsgroups . The operating company was called Deja News Inc. The name Deja News probably alludes to the term Déjà vu , literally seen from French or fate repeats itself .

Steve Madere, founder of Deja News Inc., put the site online for the first time in 1995 in Austin, Texas . With its extensive search capabilities , it garnered acclaim, generated controversy, and changed the way discussion forums were perceived.

Although there had been archives of newsgroups before, Deja News offered a novel combination of functions: It was accessible to the public, provided an easy-to-use user interface on the web , allowed inquiries about all archived groups at the same time, and delivered quick results and kept articles available without restriction (regular news servers usually delete articles after a few weeks). With these possibilities, Usenet suddenly changed from a loosely organized communication medium with a fleeting character to a valuable source of information.

The permanent availability combined with the possibility to search for authors led to controversial discussions about data protection and privacy . The warning often expressed on Usenet that one should be careful with what one reveals in articles was particularly topical.

The operator Madere was initially unwilling to remove archived posts, but protests from users and threats of legal action changed this. His site finally supported the permanent removal of articles ( called nuking , from English to nuke : to attack with nuclear weapons ) by certain authors who did not want to be listed.

In addition, the X-No-Archive header was introduced, with which an author could ask in the article to exclude this article from being included in the archive (or from displaying the article in a search).

Rightsholders were also given the option to remove items that contained their intellectual property without permission. According to Humphrey Marr of Deja News, this was most commonly used by Scientology .

The Deja News service was eventually expanded to go beyond simply searching for articles. With My Deja News , you could read articles in groups and in chronological order in the traditional way you are used to from news readers. The opportunity was also given to write articles. Deja Communities made non-public forums possible, which was mainly used by companies.

In 1999 the focus changed significantly. Deja News was renamed Deja.com in May and primarily offered a price comparison service. Deja readers were asked to classify all sorts of products through reviews, and this information was in turn incorporated into the recommendations on the Deja site. During this reorientation, the servers also changed their location, after which numerous older items were no longer available.

Deja began 2000 with the fact advertising in Usenet articles display. Individual terms were provided with hyperlinks to the advertised websites. This change was very badly received by parts of the Usenet community.

Towards the end of 2000, after the dot-com bubble burst , the company had financial problems. There was no risk capital and advertising income did not break even. The price comparison service was sold to Ebay , who used it on their Half.com site.

In 2001 the Usenet search service was shut down. The archives and domains were bought up by the company Google Inc. and offered again as Google Groups . Google had also received archives from other sources and was able to offer around 650 million articles that went back to 1981 , shortly after Usenet was even founded.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Deja.COM builds advertising into your postings . FITUG mailing list. July 19, 2000. Retrieved February 18, 2019.