October 15, 2001

5:40 AM

It was with great fanfare from Yahoo, and uproar from the users, that Yahoo took over Webring last year. Now, with not so much as a whisper, they have given it back up. It still looks and feels like the Yahoo Webring, but many of the functions that were stripped from the Yahoo version of the system have been reinstituted. Is this too little, too late -- or will Webring be able to steal back some of its former users from sites such as RingSurf who benefited so greatly from Webring's previous demise?
posted by elfgirl (7 comments total)

now I wish they would do the same with onelist/egroups!
posted by BlitzK at 5:48 AM on October 15, 2001

Things Yahoo takes over turn to crap. Egroups was never the same. Er, not remotely the same.
posted by fleener at 6:13 AM on October 15, 2001

now I wish they would do the same with onelist/egroups!

Oh my god, yes. Is there an alternative to Yahoo! Groups, especially one with some better groupware/project management capabilities?

I've never really understood why there would be dedicated webring sites, though. What does that give you? (Not a snarky comment--since I don't "do" webrings, I don't really know what the management issues are.)
posted by rodii at 6:35 AM on October 15, 2001

The best alternative to YahooGroups would be, I think, Topica, which is where almost all of the YahooGroups I've been a part of fled to in the aftermath of the takeover.

As to the reason for a dedicated webring site, it allows for some automated capabilities, prevents the ringmaster from having to do everything by hand, allows for "see a site at random" or "see all the associated sites" functionality without stressing any particular individual's server or cgi-bin (if they have one) and so, if you're inclined toward rings, they're good things.
posted by Dreama at 6:45 AM on October 15, 2001

Thanks, Dreama. I sort of thought Topica was an email harvester/spammer service. Is that not so?
posted by rodii at 7:04 AM on October 15, 2001

Why should I go back to Webring? Ringsurf is just fine and I already got burned once. Actually, as turning things to crap goes, Yahoo screwed up webring much more than egroups.
posted by locombia at 8:51 AM on October 15, 2001

Who uses webrings anymore?
posted by Big Fat Tycoon at 11:32 AM on October 15, 2001