Newsgroup

From Fan History Wiki

A newsgroup is a central repository for postings to the Usenet. While newsgroups actually played a huge part in the early online fandoms, the onset of free mailling lists and other user-friendly places like LiveJournal have rendered them less pertinent to Media fans although a great many other types of fans (such as Science Fiction fans) still utilize them.

For more information on newsgroups and their history, Wikipedia[1] offers an excellent overview.