Publicize It..on the Announce Newsgroup
by Cynthia (Sunni) Freyer, President, CFNA, Inc.
If you manage or own a non-commercial web site that serves as an excellent global resource, publicize it on the moderated newsgroup comp.infosystems.www.announce
This usenet group's sole basis for existence is to serve as a vehicle for announcing web-based resources of international interest. That doesn't mean they won't post English-only sites. If the site has sufficient content to attract interest from more than your hometown, than it stands a good chance of getting listed. As with offline media, submission of your brief announcement doesn't guarantee placement. Scores of of submissions occur daily. The moderated usenet group also doesn't do reposts without good reason.
This group does NOT post the following types of announcements:
- Commercial advertising
- "Make Money Fast" or any other spam messages
- Job postings and resumés
- Announcements of resources not accessible on the World-Wide Web, such as mailing lists and emailed newsletters, unless they directly discuss Web matters
- Announcements of seminars or conferences not connected with the Web
- Posts about sites of purely local interest (worldwide relevance is an expected aspect of postings to internationally-distributed newsgroups)
- Announcements for sites with zero content: a page with 6 advertising
banners, 12 animated gifs and a list of links doesn't constitute a resource.
- Gerald Oskoboiny's HURL Archive, USA
- George Ferguson's newsweb, USA
- Doc Dick Botting's list of Recently Announced WWW Sites, USA
- Critical Mass Communications WWW USENET Archive, USA
- Ghlenn Willard's New Websites compilation, Sweden
If you haven't ever read anything posted at the announce newsgroup, you must before you actually submit any copy. Here are links to archives that you can peruse right on the web:
You'll notice when reviewing any of the above archives that the keywords in the subject lines of posts are important. Some of the most commonly used keywords in posts are:
ARCHIVE ENTERTAINMENT LAW RELIGION ART ENVIRONMENT MAGAZINE SCIENCE BOOK FAQ MISC SERVER BROWSER FICTION MUSIC SILLY COLLECTION GAMES NEWS SOFTWARE CULTURE HEALTH PERSONAL SPORTS ECONOMY HUMANITIES POLITICS TRANSPORTATION EDUCATION JOURNAL REFERENCE UPDATE
copyright 1998 Cynthia Freyer All rights reserved.