Yahoo will give you an extra week to post on Yahoo Groups, says it will ‘listen to feedback’
0Reported today in The Verge.
Yahoo will give you an extra week to post on Yahoo Groups, says it will ‘listen to feedback’
If you were saddened to hear that you will no longer be able to post to Yahoo Groups starting next week, cheer up — you’ve now got an extra week to post.
Yahoo’s plan to largely shut down Groups was widely publicized on October 16th, just days before the company was going to freeze uploads on October 21st. But today, the company told us that date is actually going to be a bit later, on October 28th. (It has also added the new date to its support document about the decision.) However, no matter when you post something to a group, it’s still going to get deleted, as Yahoo is still removing all content hosted on Groups on December 14th.
Yahoo Groups once served as a place for discussions on just about any niche topic you could think of, a lot like Reddit does now. Once the old content is gone, though, all you’ll be able to do on Yahoo Groups is browse the group’s directory, request to be invited to one, and, if you’re in a group, email that group.
In a statement, Yahoo suggested that most people just use Groups for emailing anyway:
We are tailoring Groups’ features to match the preferences of our Groups members. Most of our members connect and share content primarily over email, so we believe this change will streamline and improve the Groups experience. Yahoo Groups will continue to provide a way for people to connect with their communities around shared interests, and we will continue to listen to feedback to ensure we keep our users happy.
So I guess it’s not that surprising that Yahoo is keeping the messaging functionality around, if it’s as widely used as Yahoo says it is.
If you really want to be able to post to your groups again, Yahoo says it’s listening to feedback. But I still think all of Yahoo’s actions mark the beginning of the end of Groups.