

Whoa: It's 2012, and the World's Most Popular Email Service Is ... Hotmail - awwstn2
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/whoa-its-2012-and-the-worlds-most-popular-email-service-is-hotmail/259054/

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DavidAdams
From the article: "Microsoft's Hotmail was the most popular Internet-based
email service globally as of May, with about 325 million unique visitors.
Yahoo's service ranked second, with roughly 298 million users, while Google's
Gmail garnered about 289 million users."

Notice the problem here? Maybe it's just an error on the part of the author,
but if they're comparing "unique visitors" of hotmail.com to the published
number of users of the other services, that's an apples to oranges comparison.

Also making this survey a little useless is the fact that many people are like
me: I have a hotmail account from the olden days, and several years ago, I set
it to forward to my Google Apps account, and it's probably going to stay that
way until Microsoft goes out of business. So I'm listed as a hotmail user,
even though I rarely give it much attention, and use Google Mail as my
everyday tool.

Nevertheless, it's a catchy headline, and a good example of a platform long
tail. Even though hotmail's sexy days are a decade or more in the past, it
remains relevant because it's sticky, and even trend chasers like me continue
to "use" it because my old hotmail address is still out there and continues to
get mail.

~~~
Retric
I have both a gmail and hotmail accounts and I use Hotmail because it works,
gets less spam, and I think google knows enough about me as it stands. Gmail
does have a nicer interface but that's about it IMO.

~~~
adventureful
That seems strange. I've had a gmail account since the first open days of the
beta in 2004, and never get spam in my inbox. Their spam filtering works
extraordinarily well for me.

~~~
pooriaazimi
Same for me. I'm far from a Google lover, but I opened my Gmail account in
2004 (when it was still invitation-only), and never, ever did I hesitate to
put my email address even in the shitiest, scammiest sites/registration forums
I see. Only about 5-6 spams in the past 8 years, an 0 false positives.

My previous experience with Yahoo (pre 2004) was _much much_ worse. I haven't
use Hotmail though, and as I seriously doubt Apple's technical skills when it
comes to cloud services, I don't feel safe to put my @me.com address anywhere
public.

~~~
jackmoore
I guess I'm the only one that gets spam with Gmail. I receive about 15,000
spam a month of which 10-20 a day get through. Unfortunately my email address
is in the JavaScript of a lot of websites due to a plugin I authored.

~~~
fps
Not alone; I'm in the same boat, although I haven't done as much to get my
address "out there"

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Shenglong
We need to remember that Hotmail and Yahoo have a lot of worldwide users. I
think these numbers are a little more accurate, considering Atlantic's
reporting bias (page 20):

[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46245195/Strategy%20and%20governance...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46245195/Strategy%20and%20governance%20at%20Yahoo!%20Inc.pdf)

Gmail is also probably growing, at least if we compare advertising growth
rates. I don't actually have data for the mail services and I realize there
will be discrepancies, but this is from a presentation some time ago for the
above case that sort of visualizes advertising (mail) growth:

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46245195/comp.png>

------
INTPenis
Everytime I try to close my hotmail account I get an error from the website
and give up.

------
rodolphoarruda
We recently ran a pilot with some students from our 13 thousand student base.
Our reports show: 69% Hotmail; 13% Yahoo!; 10% Gmail.

~~~
degenerate
I'm glad I don't live where you do. Seriously. I would hate to be surrounded
by that many people who don't know how to look past their nose.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
As opposed to being surrounded by people looking down their nose?

~~~
dr42
I suspect there's a strong correlation between the email account host and the
place on the early adopter curve.

There's nothing wrong about wanting to live near other early adopters.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
What?

This whole conversation is disgusting. It's an _email_ account. But since it's
ubiquitous and mainstream, now it turns into this weird cultural thing where
we have to make sure we have the _right_ email account, lest we look like one
of them.

Repeat after me: it's an _email_ account. Not a reflection on your identity.

~~~
dr42
It may be disgusting to you, and you may not understand what I meant, but I'm
afraid, my friend, that doesn't change the fact that there are correlations
between the choices you make and your socioeconomic profile. It's the whole
basis of collaborative filtering. You like movie A, B and C and will likely
like movie Z. You buy a Mac and are likely to book more upscale hotels, you
keep an old yahoo or hotmail account and you're likely further down the
adopter curve.

It's like when you visit a website and it's still using comic sans and looks
like it was from the Geocities days, you form an impression. This is your
brain do collaborative filtering. Same thing with email host.

Yes it's an _email_ account, but they come in different flavors and some
flavors are associated with the early adopter (cool kids) crowd (@gmail.com),
and some are associated with their parents (@hotmail.com)

~~~
mattgreenrocks
> Yes it's an email account, but they come in different flavors and some
> flavors are associated with the early adopter (cool kids) crowd
> (@gmail.com), and some are associated with their parents (@hotmail.com)

Unfortunately, the "cool kids" part gives you away. Like so many things in
life, you win by opting not to play the [horribly broken] game.

Being secure in your identity means you don't have to partake in idiotic
status signaling like this. Why? Because you just _don't care_ about all the
things you're told you should be doing in order to be 'relevant.' You're happy
just to be you, and to do what you need to do. Culture still weighs on you,
but it doesn't have to dictate your life. And you know what happens? Over
time, people become _more_ interested in you because of this. They may
question you, but they may also envy you.

The path to discover one's true self is a lifelong journey, and I bid you good
luck on it.

~~~
dr42
"Unfortunately, the "cool kids" part gives you away."

I am unsure of your intention here, but I think you are just not getting this
at all. If you are assuming I am a cool kid then you are mistaken. I am a 42
year old software architect at a fortune 500 company.

I think you have this all backwards. Early adopters picked gmail (as did all
their friends) not to signal, but because it was better, faster, more secure.
Those that didn't and stuck with yahoo and hotmail (and who continue to have
their accounts hacked) are perceived by _others_ (no matter how secure they
might be in themselves) as not keeping up.

Maybe an example will help, let's say you put your myspace account in your
profile. You can be the most secure person on the planet, but people will look
at your profile and a draw a conclusion.

"The path to discover one's true self is a lifelong journey, and I bid you
good luck on it."

Haha - I think it's a bit of stretch to go from email host provider to some
zen moment, but I guess you didn't really have any point to make, so resorting
to condescension was the next best thing. :)

Now, let me get back to my Well account...

~~~
mattgreenrocks
Ah sorry, didn't mean to be condescending. My beef (obviously) is with the
downward perception of "not keeping up." I see it as unnecessarily judgmental,
and I dislike people sticking up for it.

------
Monotoko
A lot of 90's kids who came online in the early 2000's (me being one of them)
used MSN for instant messenger, and I still do to this day.

I use Gmail for email, the only thing my hotmail is used for is to sign into
MSN.

~~~
p0ckets
You can sign up for MSN messenger with any email address.

~~~
Monotoko
Aye I know, but back then there weren't that many other providers. I wasn't
too interested in who my provider was and I was too young to remember the
yahoo days, it was my first email account and I used it solely for MSN (and a
game I loved) for years. I wonder how many of us there are inflating those
numbers?

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onlyup
To me this isn't a surprise. It's anecdotal, but the majority of my social
circle have hotmail emails. Followed by gmail and then Yahoo. So yeah, based
on my experiences I would have assumed Hotmail is the most popular.

~~~
rexf
anecdotal: nearly every person in my contacts uses Gmail.

update: per the article, i'm one of those who has an "active" hotmail account,
which i haven't used for e-mail for several years. i check hotmail once in a
blue moon for stuff like Games for Windows Live.

------
kristopolous
I haven't been to that site in probably 15 years. This is about what I think
of: [http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o1MzQ-
TV5SU/SIk8yBmT1ZI/AAAAAAAAEM...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o1MzQ-
TV5SU/SIk8yBmT1ZI/AAAAAAAAEMg/EiRyQP6qyR0/s400/hotmail1997.jpg)

The red logo, a lot of blue over the right half of the screen and I could have
sworn that the login was on the left hand side, that's how I remember it.

This is the hotmail that is basically, burned into my memory until my death:
<http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/ne/p/2006/1997-hotmail.jpg>

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davisml
Given the headline from 2 days ago – "Facebook forces all users over to
Facebook.com e-mail addresses" – isn't Facebook the world's most popular email
service?

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sriramk
I have a reasonably popular app and I was stunned to see how much Yahoo and
Hotmail addresses dominate. Very different from my friends circles.

~~~
acheron
I sign up for most apps with my Yahoo account, because why should I give
Random App my real email address? For the most part I don't care what it's
emailing me, so I just need an address where I can go to click on the
inevitable "activation" link.

~~~
slavak
That is why mailinator.com was created...

------
blafro
Spammers and 419 bots probably account for a good chunk of hotmail (and yahoo)
usage.

------
dasil003
It certainly is the most popular service for spam accounts registered to my
company.

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sirclueless
I expect that trend to continue and increase further once Windows 8 ships with
Windows Live authentication (just as Google's Android ships with GMail
authentication).

------
yashchandra
I have a hotmail account but i have not used it for years since gmail. So
technically am I a user of hotmail ?

~~~
checoivan
If you don't login, it's not counted. If you don't log in for over a year then
the account would be deleted.

~~~
pooriaazimi
But if you forward it to say Gmail, then you count as a user (Gmail pings
Hotmail for you).

~~~
checoivan
Establishing a connection and doing the full successful authentication through
a client, pop, or web counts as a login.

Incoming mail or a simple ping to the mail server won't counted as a user
view. With all the spam, fake mails, and mail bomb pings, views would then
report bajillions of hits and nothing would expire.

