Saturday, April 23, 2016

The WesternPulps Yahoo Group

I founded the WesternPulps Yahoo Group 17 years ago today. I always forget to say anything about it on the group, so I scheduled this blog post to make sure I didn't forget this year. When I founded the group it wasn't on Yahoo. It was on something called E-Groups, I think. Then it became One List. Or maybe it was the other way around, I'm not sure. But eventually Yahoo swallowed up whatever service it was on, and there we still are.

Of course, email groups are dinosaurs in this day and age, even older than blogs. But I have a great fondness for WesternPulps. It limped along with hardly any posts for the first year or so, then a fellow named Kent Johnson (who has since passed away) joined and started promoting it and posting all the time, and he really jump-started the group. For a while it was pretty high-traffic, reaching a high of 703 messages in February 2002. These days 50 messages is a good month.

Still, I think it's a very worthwhile group, if for no other reason than the wealth of information to be found in the files and archives. I also love it because of all the friends I've made through the group, many of whom are regular readers of this blog and are also my friends on Facebook now. But WesternPulps was there first, and it's going to stay around as long as I can possibly manage it, maybe until I'm just posting messages to myself again, the way it started.

But in the meantime, if you want to come say howdy to an old social media dinosaur, the group can be found here.

3 comments:

Tom Johnson said...

I have several Yahoo Groups, James. But few messages any more. Rumors still insist that Yahoo is trying to sell, and if someone else buys, Groups may be shut down. If so, it will be a shame. There are so many photographs saved on all the Groups that may end up in Limbo.

James Reasoner said...

I've heard those rumors, too, Tom, and I hope it doesn't come about, but I'll keep WesternPulps going as long as they'll let me. Maybe if they shut down the groups, they'll give us enough notice we can save some stuff.

Unknown said...

I'm in. I'll create a Yahoo account for Cowboy Jamboree and jump in. -Adam Van Winkle