OT - Glitch Trips Up Email List

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Look at the LAST sentence!

 

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glitch trips up e-mail lists

 

Tue Mar 5,11:47 AM ET

 

Stefanie Olsen CNET News.com

 

Members of 's free e-mail list service are without a clubhouse.

 

CNET Newsletters:

 

..... " , a collection of discussion lists based on various

interests, has been inaccessible from the online portal's Web site since

Monday morning, spokeswoman Mary Osako confirmed. The outage,

noted in a message on the home page, has prevented millions

of members from receiving e-mail from their cohorts. Osako would not

discuss details of the problem, but she said it is hardware-related.

 

" We're working aggressively to fix the problem and to institute new

processes to protect against similar incidents in the future, " said

Osaka, adding an apology to users.

 

An outage on the group e-mail service affects a broad audience.

Groups drew about 9.5 million unique visitors in January, according to

Net measurement company Jupiter Media Metrix.

 

The service's existence is the result of 's acquisition of eGroups

in summer 2000, when it paid roughly $432 million in stock for the

list-hosting company. At the time, the service had roughly 17 million

members and 800,000 e-mail lists.

 

is in the process of merging its and Clubs, a

similar but Web-based community that uses online posting and instant

chat to communicate.

 

said it started integrating the services two weeks ago and plans

to have the project finished by the end of March. Osako said the outage

is unrelated to the combination of the services.

 

But with impending changes, some users say the service has

become increasingly unreliable and inundated with advertisements.

 

" Some of the groups require quick transfer of information or it would

become worthless, " Craig Ochs, who lives in Brookfield, Wis., said in an

e-mail. Ochs is the moderator of an aviation-related group that trades

information about security breaches and business news in real time.

" has been less than reliable, and rumors abound about them

starting to charge for the service. Ahhhh, "

 

Osako said the company does not have plans to start charging for its

groups service. "