Uproar At Yahoo Groups

About a month ago I started hearing about neo.  At the time I had no idea what it was and for awhile I thought they were talking about Yahoo Mail, since that has been a hot topic ever since Yahoo ‘upgraded’ their mail app.

Boy was I wrong. Yahoo is again changing the feature I use the most with Yahoo, Groups. They tried to change it several years ago to resemble something like Facebook, but there was such an uproar the change didn’t happen.

But the change this time is not to each Group but to each user and the changes are not happening to everyone at once.

So what one user sees at his Group’s web interface is not what someone else is seeing and now the confusion reigns supreme.  It’s even worse for Group moderators who can’t even get logged in sometimes and when they do they can’t do the job that a moderator is supposed to do.

Since at this time I haven’t been ‘neo-nized’ it’s a bit hard for me to  understand what it means. However I expect it will happen sooner or later as I doubt Yahoo is going to back down this time.

The uproar is deafening in the Yahoo forums. Supposedly millions of members have left, thousands of Groups moved to other venues and been removed from Yahoo. At least one Group is threatening lawsuits, contacting the ADA, contacting their Congressman, the press and any other organization they think can put a stop to this ‘neo’.

I never cease to be amazed at these folks.  I suspect the majority have forgotten that the Yahoo Groups are basically a free service. Yahoo has the right to change this service at any time and even terminate the entire Groups program if they so choose.

In order to survive in the modern world of the ‘world wide web’, things must be updated. Eventually old code gets corrupted and stuff no longer works the way it should and is open to hacking.

I know these folks have been members a long time.  They have amassed albums of photos and files. Some of these Groups have thousands of members.  There are Groups for every kind of medical condition and they provide support not immediately possible elsewhere. There are Groups for dogs and dog problems and the lists go on and on. They are fighting for what is a way of life for many of them and I can’t blame them.

I think Yahoo should have let the Groups know what was coming and why. Just a warning would have made the whole neo thing easier to swallow, even though the members may not have liked it.

As a footnote, I have heard from a few members that actually like neo. As for me I will wait and see what eventually happens.

Martha