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Mailing List, Listserv
Mailing lists serve a similar purpose to newsgroups: They're both
excellent ways to stay in-the-know about your favorite hobby, obsession,
or fetish. The main difference is that you go to a newsgroup to
check out what people have been saying, but by subscribing to a
mailing list, the mountain comes to Muhammad - the latest contribution
is sent to you via email. And any time you send email to a mailing
list, everyone who subscribes to that list gets it. Unfortunately,
because mailing lists and newsgroups are so topic specific, they're
ripe for spamming. (What better way to advertise your latest widget
than in a forum that caters to widget fiends?) But even if it means
wading through unwanted get-rich-quick email (which can actually
be filtered out with spam-zapping software), the wealth of up-to-the-minute
news, opinion, and gossip still make mailing lists and newsgroups
valuable resources.
Listserv is a commercial mailing list server that's so popular,
it's often used (in the tradition of Q-Tips, Band-aids, and Kleenex)
as interchangeable with the actual term, "mailing list."
Related Terms: email,
newsgroup,
spam
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