Emails
I recently acquired a new email address from my MBA program. This got me thinking about the number of email addresses I currently have. I have one for work, of course. Like the school email, the email server includes a few variations on my name so technically speaking I have several email addresses at work but for this blog let's count that as one. I have an alumni email address from my undergraduate university. I have an account with both Hotmail and Yahoo. My Blackberry cellphone gave me another email address. My Internet service provider gives me an email address. My website gives me an email address and I also maintain an email through the website I help update for a friend... That brings me up to nine if I counted correctly, not accounting for the variations on these email addresses (I have several permutations that route to me from the websites designed). It also does not account for the email addresses I have abandoned over the years, which I believe I could recapture; I held a Gmail account and alternate Hotmail accounts but stopped accessing them years ago. It's also possible there are additional email addresses I could use but am not aware of at the moment.
This also got me thinking to the abundance of email addresses available for free and that led me to question what value these email addresses have to the providers. The number of options implies there is a value there, but what that constitutes is not immediately apparent. It's surely a cheap cost to maintain an email server to handle thousands of email addresses, though the larger providers easily have hundreds of millions of email accounts consuming terabytes of data storage, representing massive amounts of electronics equipment costs and maintenance including responding to millions of users problems.
The Internet really blossomed from the time I entered college until a couple of years after I graduated. Originally email was handled through separate programs and over time web-based applications pushed email online. This meant a few things, among which was the linking to other things online including advertisements. I had to go back to double-check and of course my free Hotmail account has a large ad banner on the right border. I'm so accustomed to ignoring it (!), but there is some value to that space being visible. Let
s say 1 in 1,000 Yahoo users notice the ad, if they have 100 million users that's 100,000 users noticing the advertisement. There's a value to that, whatever it may be.
I found a ranking of top 20 websites visited as of July 2010 and it places Yahoo Mail at 4th, Windows Live Mail at 8th, Gmail at 11th, and AOL Mail at 14th most popular websites visited. I'm sure not how these rankings get tabulated nor how they can ever be validated but the point is the despite the massive size of the Internet a large portion of traffic flows through email services. This means a strong email presence conveys a strong web presence. In addition to the banner ads email providers can offer tie-in services like instant messenger, text services, photo services, etc. The email gateway is one path to retain a user on a suite of products. I think this is easiest to see where Microsoft bundles its email with access to its search engine (bing), instant messenger, calendar, online storage (SkyDrive), and a social network (Spaces) with links to MSNBC news, Microsoft Office products, and other sites (like Fox Sports). That is a lot offered in return for accepting the free email account. Most of us never consider the catch accepted with that offer: "here's free email but we're going to clog the screen with ads and link the email to all the other products we have to offer."
In this light, it is not surprising the larger online companies make email freely available. That does not explain why my phone and Internet provider also give me email, though if I ever directly accessed them I might see banners and links as well. It's more likely that users expect what is perceived to be a zero cost from businesses offering services and those providers in turn realize a minute fraction will ever use the product so it can be offered with expectation of negligible actual costs. Likewise, the going standard for colleges and universities is to offer email to alumni and given the contributions of alumni donations it's a small investment to meet the meager needs given a small minority will use these email accounts.
Current Job - 1
Current school - 1
Former school - 1
Search engines - 2
Cellphone provider - 1
Internet provider -1
Website provider - 2
This also got me thinking to the abundance of email addresses available for free and that led me to question what value these email addresses have to the providers. The number of options implies there is a value there, but what that constitutes is not immediately apparent. It's surely a cheap cost to maintain an email server to handle thousands of email addresses, though the larger providers easily have hundreds of millions of email accounts consuming terabytes of data storage, representing massive amounts of electronics equipment costs and maintenance including responding to millions of users problems.
The Internet really blossomed from the time I entered college until a couple of years after I graduated. Originally email was handled through separate programs and over time web-based applications pushed email online. This meant a few things, among which was the linking to other things online including advertisements. I had to go back to double-check and of course my free Hotmail account has a large ad banner on the right border. I'm so accustomed to ignoring it (!), but there is some value to that space being visible. Let
s say 1 in 1,000 Yahoo users notice the ad, if they have 100 million users that's 100,000 users noticing the advertisement. There's a value to that, whatever it may be.
I found a ranking of top 20 websites visited as of July 2010 and it places Yahoo Mail at 4th, Windows Live Mail at 8th, Gmail at 11th, and AOL Mail at 14th most popular websites visited. I'm sure not how these rankings get tabulated nor how they can ever be validated but the point is the despite the massive size of the Internet a large portion of traffic flows through email services. This means a strong email presence conveys a strong web presence. In addition to the banner ads email providers can offer tie-in services like instant messenger, text services, photo services, etc. The email gateway is one path to retain a user on a suite of products. I think this is easiest to see where Microsoft bundles its email with access to its search engine (bing), instant messenger, calendar, online storage (SkyDrive), and a social network (Spaces) with links to MSNBC news, Microsoft Office products, and other sites (like Fox Sports). That is a lot offered in return for accepting the free email account. Most of us never consider the catch accepted with that offer: "here's free email but we're going to clog the screen with ads and link the email to all the other products we have to offer."
In this light, it is not surprising the larger online companies make email freely available. That does not explain why my phone and Internet provider also give me email, though if I ever directly accessed them I might see banners and links as well. It's more likely that users expect what is perceived to be a zero cost from businesses offering services and those providers in turn realize a minute fraction will ever use the product so it can be offered with expectation of negligible actual costs. Likewise, the going standard for colleges and universities is to offer email to alumni and given the contributions of alumni donations it's a small investment to meet the meager needs given a small minority will use these email accounts.
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