Han-Net
Houston Activist Network
1998-2003

This is how activists communicated with each other
on the net in the primordial time before Facebook...

Han-Net was the first internet presence that connected Houston LGBT activists.
It was set up as a Yahoo egroup and created and run by Brandon Wolf.
It had up to 250 members at one point and ran from November 1998 to
November 2003, averaging almost 800 messages per month

It was almost immediately succeeded by another Yahoo group, Lonestar Activists,
lasting from October 2003 until mid-2015. For its run it averaged over 275
messages per month

Houston Voice Intro Coverage

Houston Voice Update, December 2000

Texas Triangle Article, December 2001

Texas Triangle Article, May 2002

Texas Triangle Article, November 2003

Getting actual internet data on Han-Net isn't easy.....I used the Internet Archive and I think
it also helped that I was a former member of Lonestar Activists. This got into the Yahoo Groups
area (you have to be a member), and I barely remembered my sign-in data. Here's what I found...
not sure if it will work for you but here is the link I ultimately used
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/han-net/conversations/messages?messageStartId=1&archiveSearch=true

the first post (it says #3, as the first two were tests)

the last posts....could not bring up an individual post, but this lists the last few, November 1, 2003

Notice the box in the upper left, seems like I remember (if you were a member) you could bring up a list of other members

Menu area listing posts per month
They totalled 47,478, with an average of 790 per month
This screen did not allow any deeper data

And I found a page someone had saved and printed, from October 2001 (2 pages)

As Brandon Wolf was also a member of EPAH, it was mentioned from time to time in the EPAH Newsletter
As this blurb implies you had choices in how you received Han-net posts.....in daily emails,
in digest form daily or weekly, or no posts at all...you view them from the website at will, that's what I did

Here was a post from Ray Hill recounting some 1976 history.
This was used for a Banner Project entry for Fred Paez.

And, here is a discussion, 18 pages, from February 2002 about where our community's
fundraising should go, now that the need for AIDS was less...it became quite active,
and of course strayed from the first topic.

So, the Han-net group hosted a variety of discussions over the years.

Lonestar Activists Yahoo Group
October 2003 - June 2015

First post

I found no "media" coverage, such as The Voice, mentioning this group,
and though it lasted until 2014, there was not even a Facebook group set up

As Brandon Wolf is a good friend I was very pleased by his comments about this page;
he talks about the very early angles of the project, and credits Deborah Bell with necessary guidance.