This article was written on October 09, 2007 by CyberNet.
Yahoo Mail is celebrating their 10th birthday this month! They’ve been around for a decade, and between now and then, our email habits sure have changed. Yahoo’s mail service originally started due to the acquisition of RocketMail. They were watching Hotmail sweep up thousands of users everyday, and knew they didn’t have the time to create their own platform. Shortly after the acquisition of RocketMail, Yahoo! Mail launched. Back when the service first launched, each user was allowed just 3 megabytes of storage. These days, email has become a primary way that many of us share photos with friends and family, and those photo attachments are much larger than what the total inbox storage limit was just a few years ago. With Yahoo celebrating their 10th birthday, we thought it was a perfect time to take a look at how our email habits have changed over time.
Yahoo has put together a survey which takes a look at our changing email habits. Among the questions that they asked was “If you were stranded on a desert island and could have only one of the following, what would you choose? The options were chocolate, photo album, email, MP3 player, sunscreen. Most people will likely choose email. Why? Because that’s how many of us communicate with friends and family on a regular basis. Back in 1999, Americans were sending 2.1 billion emails every day. Today that number is up to 196 billion emails per day! It’s clear that we rely much more on email now than we ever did 10 years ago.
What we use email for is also changing. Before, it was primarily used just to email a friend to determine where to meet or to say hi. Now we send emails to companies for technical support, and we receive order confirmations for items purchased online. Instead of making a phone call to ask a question to someone, we send an email. Instead of mailing off a letter to family or friends that live farther away, we email. Given the choice, many of us prefer to send an email to someone instead of making a call.
Besides the fact that email habits have changed over the last several years, the mail services themselves have had to make a lot of changes to “keep up.” Yahoo points out that back when they first launched email, users had the choice of having their email address displayed in a public directory and most people opted in. Now none of us would ever think to post our address in a public directory for fear of getting spammed. Spam accounts for more than 70% of all email sent these days! Along the same lines is Phishing emails. Phishing has become more prominent and so mail services have had to take extra steps to prevent those emails from reaching the inboxes of their users.
I can only imagine what the state of email will be like in another 10 years from now! It continues to change and evolve, and 10 years from now, we may not even have email! How have your emailing habits changed over time?
Happy 10th birthday Yahoo! Mail!
Source: Yodel Anecdotal
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