Why I no longer yahoo for yahoo. Part I

Why I no longer yahoo for yahoo. Part I

I used to love yahoo groups. And even though Facebook has taken over a lot of the communications, what yahoo groups had going for it was ruined with the recent changes.

Instead of improving their strengths. Yahoo made the groups less useful. I have closed a couple of my groups because of this.

Groups used to provide a website that was dedicated to your group. I used that feature for a couple clubs. Need an address? Go to the membership list. We had pictures posted in the photos. Had a picture of members on the top of the page. Calendar feature sent automatic reminders of meetings. Members could easily find the different features. 

I had groups centered around the calendar feature. Family cottage. Who is using it when. When is it available. Very few emails sent. Someone left a pink dog leash; anyone knows who it belongs to?  Another group sent out family birthday reminders, had family addresses, and we did email to each other. That group, other than the birthdays has been taken over by Facebook. But Facebook doesn't send out reminders for all the grandchild's birthdays... So we keep the yahoo group because of that. 

Then I had several groups centered around the file feature. We share public domain music. Whenever I posted more music, the member got an email with a link to the music. Another group sends out newsletters. When I posted the newsletter, an email went out automatically with the link.

So what happened to groups? They made the emails the most important feature. When I sign in to groups I get a web page with just emails. If I go to one of the individual group pages, the website is gone from it's old format. The calendar is harder to use. If I post a file, members don't get an email with the link. I can't send out a link to one file. I can only send a link to the page. Yahoo automatically sends out an email telling members that I posted something to the files, but not what or where. Pretty useless for the newsletter or music.

So I will now take a look Google groups and see if there are any alternatives. Started a Facebook group for one of the groups that I deleted. 

It would have been better if yahoo had worked with it's strengths and accepted that it was not going to be Facebook but had something that Facebook doesn't offer and improved on that. What club wouldn't want an interactive club website where you can post like Facebook but that is just a feature. It would have a membership list that could be private for members only, calendar, pictures posted by members, calendar that has events that sends out reminders or not. The files were like they used to be where I could send the exact link to members.

So Yahoo. This is what I would like Yahoo groups to become. Take a look at BigTent.com. Change it to a working website for clubs/groups. Can eliminate ads if we pay something but free if you don't mind some small ads on the page. Make a group webpage that has the calendar, group's picture - don't make it a banner. Something we can take with our camera. Public forum for questions about the group. Private forum for members only. Posts can be emailed to members. Newsletter capabilities. Files for newsletters, etc. Current files are nice. Can set up folders. Photos that are uploaded - some of them show on the webpage. Posts like on Facebook. The groups on Facebook really don't work that well for anything other than posting comments and replies. Want more than that.