Back in the day, eGroups (which became YahooGroups through acquisition) revolutionized group formation online in 1998. Prior to that time you had to essentially have your own server or be based at an university to run an e-mail list. It took me many months to find the folks at the U of Minn in 1993 where I could host the Public Policy Network e-mail list that got me into online group building originally. With E-Democracy.org (until we moved to YahooGroups for a number of years) we were lucky to have Minnesota's then largest ISP and regional Internet node host our MN-Politics forum using "majordomo." Remember that name?