No matter where your interests lie, you can find others on the
Net with similar interests. You can meet these people and begin
to exchange notes, learn from their experiences, and offer your
own experiences in return. The support you can receive from
online friends can be truly amazing.
But how do you begin to find them?
Let's start at Liszt, the Mailing List Directory, which offers
over 90,000 mailing lists. You can search the directory, or you
can browse through categories and finetune it from there. Let's
say you're an elementary school teacher, and you want to meet
other elementary teachers in different parts of the world. You'd
click on Education, then on Elementary in the subcategories
listing. Liszt boasts over 112 lists in the topic of education
alone.
http://www.liszt.com/
Maybe you don't care about being able to post messages to
mailing lists, but you're mainly interested in the most recent
news in particular subjects. In that case, an e-zine or
newsletter is more of what you're looking for. At the eZines
Database, you'll find an extensive listing of e-zines to which
you can subscribe. Categories include hobbies, fashion,
fiction and poetry, military, and religion.
http://www.dominis.com/Zines/
If you'd like to receive sample copies of newsletters, visit
the Newsletter Library. The site offers over 11,000 free
newsletters, and you simply choose whichever categories are of
interest to you.
http://pub.savvy.com/
Visiting the newsgroups is another way of meeting people that
share common interests. Deja News is your best source for
information on the newsgroups. Simply choose a category, out of
possible categories such as political issues, diet, investing,
or home and garden. Or, you can search for newsgroups by
plugging in a keyword.
http://www.dejanews.com/
If you're interested in business-related e-mail discussion
lists, visit The Marketing Resource Center: Listserv Directory:
http://www.marketingsource.com/listserv/
You can also participate in web-based discussion forums. Stop
by Forum One: The Web's Search Engine for Online Forums, and
search for the topic of your choice. Under the category of
Health, you'll find 76 different health-related forums to choose
from.
http://www.forumone.com/
Finally, Tile.Net/Lists allows you to search for discussion
lists and newsgroups from one handy location. You can also join
Tile.Net's mailing lists to receive the latest information on
the topic of your choice, in major categories such as business,
Internet, computers, and professionals.
http://tile.net/lists/
