Little love for Google Groups?

This post was written on 2009/10/27 at 22:22:49 by Horst Gutmann

Primary link: ejohn.org

Today, John Resig wrote a really nice (and quite lenghty) post about Google Groups and why he dislikes it because of its interaction with SPAM. The article is a really nice read so I highly recommend to check it out. I've been a participant on quite a few Google Groups to see the problem. Especially larger groups eventually offen see themselves in a situation where moderating them is so much work, that it's sometimes not worth the effort anymore. So, they either set the moderation limit rather restrictively or move to a different solution altogether simply because Google Groups are a too attractive target for the scum of the adverticing business.

I'm personally not really a big fan of Google Groups. At first I was thrilled by how easy it is to set up a mailinglist + archives with it. For some reason, though, it never had the feel of an integrated solution but this is probably mostly due to also the other Google apps not really integrating themselves not all too well with Google's own Domain Apps. There is also the whole problem of being locked in without a clean way of exporting all mails posted on such a group. For this and also the SPAM problem, a dedicated server is probably the better solution than something so centralized. You simply have far more options at your disposal and can tweak your whole battle-strategy to your own liking. For some reason, I also always fear that one day some spammer will spoof my own email address on too many Google Groups and all my mails sent to other people on GMail will see only the SPAM folder during their 14 days of life :-/

<update>Not that I think mailman is the perfect solution either. Google Groups tries to be somehow a mix between a bulletin board and a mailinglist, which is a good idea, but for me the focus is still too much on the mailinglist part, which has its problems when used for really large communities.</update>

Google Groups is still a nice solution for private groups where members all have a Google account but I definitely understand why some projects are slowly moving away from it for large mailinglists. In this regard I'm also really curious about what solution JQuery will use in the future.

Comments:

  • Daniel Hölbling (Guest)

    As already said on jResig's post: I believe there is no better way than Google groups for discussion right now. Especially for people following many different discussions like me, having everything come to my inbox instead of me having to go through 10+ bulletin boards is perfect.

    I agree that they should fix the Spam problem ASAP, they already have the technology, and maybe that jQuery post will make them rethink their strategy and get their act together.. I for one wouldn't want to miss my Google Groups :(

    Google Groups is equally important as Google Reader .. and that means a lot.. I can't imagine myself going to some dedicated bulletin board for discussion any more. (Especially since having a Android phone with ubiquitous email)

    Oct. 28, 2009, 1:02 a.m.

  • zerok

    I don't think a pure bulletin board is the solution either, but a hybrid of those two is for me personally the way to go.

    Oct. 28, 2009, 7:37 a.m.

  • Andres Davidovits (Guest)

    After reading your 'Little Love for Google Groups?' post above, I wanted to share with you our recently released group-sharing site called rrripple. Perhaps there would be an interest to share our site with your readers.

    We’re trying another approach to private group sharing — a drag and drop user interface built around a cool looking UI (at least I hope you'll think it's cool). :) We had the thought: how about focusing on groups, and bring a new user interface to the world of groups? So that's what we did.

    We’re offering 2GB for photos and other digital media, 1GB extra for video, and for free — with a 150MB limit per month for photos and other digital media and 250MB limit for videos. No daily limits, and up to 5MB per photo (and files) uploaded and 100MB per video uploaded.

    You can watch a quick video on YouTube that shows the service here -- or the first of our tutorial videos here.

    We've had some good press, too, including: 

    “The site has a slick and fairly unique design…one of rrripple’s key focuses is on allowing users to choose exactly which users they want to share their content with. rrripple is showing promise.” TechCrunch

“If you are into sharing media online, visiting this site is mandatory if only because of the control it will let you exert over such a process. The approach is not that radical…but the execution somehow makes a true difference. Maybe it is the fact that you are 100 % in control of who sees or listens to what….Not everybody cares about such things, of course, but the rest of us are bound to find something like rrripple appealing for the flexibility it adds.” Killer Startups.com

“Can't dip your toes in Google Wave yet? Try out rrripple! A new way to share with groups with slick GUI.” Dadomatic.com

“rrripple Making Waves in the Digital Lifeflow: rrripple is a recently launched site that organizes your digital life in a new way. Along a vertical time line, your stored and shared media is arranged in a way that makes sense. Having your contacts separated from the groups makes it a seamless action to incorporate privacy into your sharing behavior. This makes rrripple an interesting and thoughtful application.” Bub.licio.us

    If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly.

    Regards, and happy blogging!

    Andres Davidovits Co-Founder, Chief Product Officer

    Nov. 24, 2009, 1:37 a.m.

  • zerok

    @Andres: It definitely looks nice for sharing content with friends and family, based on the video demo I don't really see rrripple as a communication platform.

    Nov. 24, 2009, 7:33 a.m.

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