Usenet newsgroups are often thought of or related to a web or online forum
. However, there are quite a few differences between these two very unique platforms; even though they do share more than a couple of large similarities.
One of the first and most obvious differences here is that while forums are usually just viewed in your web browser, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, newsgroups or "posted" as well as read with unique software designed for their respective purposes. Although this software is 100% free and available as a download from a number of different websites it certainly makes the experience of writing or reading in Usenet newsgroups a unique one.
Another big difference between traditional web mediums, such as forums, and these sort of newsgroups is that content is traditionally stored in a binary forum. That is, sort of a coded form rather than having big media such as streaming video. This helps to greatly reduce the server load and essentially make it cheap and easy for smaller newsgroups to be started by a wide array of different people from different backgrounds.
Generally speaking these are user created/updated communities. Content is posted and updated by individual users on their own. Sure, the administrator can do things such as delete spam or outdated content and even post content but part of what makes it so great is the fact that there are a large number of people constantly creating and adding new and fresh content for us to view.