Newsgroups are online discussion areas that allow users to read messages and send messages to other people who have subscribed the group.
All messages are available to the public.
Unlike mailing lists, news messages are not sent to an e-mail address. In order to read news messages, the user must actively connect to a newsgroup. For many people, the convenience of having messages mailed to them makes mailing lists attractive. On the other hand, newsgroups allow users to choose what and when to read the messages. It is often difficult to find mailing lists on a particular topic.