12 ms·

Whoa: It's 2012, and the World's Most Popular Email Service Is ... Hotmail

36 points by awwstn2 14y ago

onlyup 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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.
- mtgx 14y ago
  I've always hated the Hotmail e-mail experience, and I can't stand receiving e-mails in Hotmail. But I've been keeping the e-mail around for using with the MSN messenger.
DavidAdams 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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.
  - elteto 14y ago
    Does it really matter the amount of spam you get if you never see it? I have used GMail exclusively since it came out and I can't remember the last time I saw spam on my inbox. Also I have never had a problem with GMail wrongly classifying a legit email as spam. I can see the desire to avoid putting more info in Google's servers as a reason to avoid GMail, but in the end you are just trading one mega-corp for another, it's all the same. And Gmail just works too.
  - adventureful 14y ago
    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 14y ago
      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 14y ago
        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.
Shenglong 14y ago
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%20at%20Yahoo!%20Inc.pdf http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46245195/Strategy%20and%20governance... 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 http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46245195/comp.png
INTPenis 14y ago
Everytime I try to close my hotmail account I get an error from the website and give up.
Monotoko 14y ago
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 14y ago
  You can sign up for MSN messenger with any email address.
  - Monotoko 14y ago
    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?
rodolphoarruda 14y ago
We recently ran a pilot with some students from our 13 thousand student base. Our reports show: 69% Hotmail; 13% Yahoo!; 10% Gmail.
- degenerate 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    As opposed to being surrounded by people looking down their nose?
    - dr42 14y ago
      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 14y ago
        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 14y ago
        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)
yashchandra 14y ago
I have a hotmail account but i have not used it for years since gmail. So technically am I a user of hotmail ?
- checoivan 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    But if you forward it to say Gmail, then you count as a user (Gmail pings Hotmail for you).
    - checoivan 14y ago
      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.
sriramk 14y ago
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.
- slig 14y ago
  Same thing here. And a lot of them can't spell hotmail.com. My app was having some many bounces that I wrote a function to detect and fix the 20 or so most common misspellings.
- acheron 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    That is why mailinator.com was created...
blafro 14y ago
Spammers and 419 bots probably account for a good chunk of hotmail (and yahoo) usage.
dasil003 14y ago
It certainly is the most popular service for spam accounts registered to my company.
kristopolous 14y ago
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/AAAAAAAAEMg/EiRyQP6qyR0/s400/hotmail1997.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o1MzQ-TV5SU/SIk8yBmT1ZI/AAAAAAAAEM... 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 http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/ne/p/2006/1997-hotmail.jpg
davisml 14y ago
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?
sirclueless 14y ago
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).

36 points by awwstn2 14y ago

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 14y ago
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.
mtgx 14y ago
I've always hated the Hotmail e-mail experience, and I can't stand receiving e-mails in Hotmail. But I've been keeping the e-mail around for using with the MSN messenger.

DavidAdams 14y ago

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 14y ago
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.
- elteto 14y ago
  Does it really matter the amount of spam you get if you never see it? I have used GMail exclusively since it came out and I can't remember the last time I saw spam on my inbox. Also I have never had a problem with GMail wrongly classifying a legit email as spam. I can see the desire to avoid putting more info in Google's servers as a reason to avoid GMail, but in the end you are just trading one mega-corp for another, it's all the same. And Gmail just works too.
- adventureful 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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 14y ago
      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.

Shenglong 14y ago

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%20at%20Yahoo!%20Inc.pdf http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46245195/Strategy%20and%20governance... 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 http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46245195/comp.png

INTPenis 14y ago

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

Monotoko 14y ago

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 14y ago
You can sign up for MSN messenger with any email address.
- Monotoko 14y ago
  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?

rodolphoarruda 14y ago

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

degenerate 14y ago
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 14y ago
  As opposed to being surrounded by people looking down their nose?
  - dr42 14y ago
    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 14y ago
      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 14y ago
        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)

yashchandra 14y ago

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

checoivan 14y ago
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 14y ago
  But if you forward it to say Gmail, then you count as a user (Gmail pings Hotmail for you).
  - checoivan 14y ago
    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.

sriramk 14y ago

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.

slig 14y ago
Same thing here. And a lot of them can't spell hotmail.com. My app was having some many bounces that I wrote a function to detect and fix the 20 or so most common misspellings.
acheron 14y ago
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 14y ago
  That is why mailinator.com was created...

blafro 14y ago

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

dasil003 14y ago

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

kristopolous 14y ago

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/AAAAAAAAEMg/EiRyQP6qyR0/s400/hotmail1997.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o1MzQ-TV5SU/SIk8yBmT1ZI/AAAAAAAAEM... 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 http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/ne/p/2006/1997-hotmail.jpg

davisml 14y ago

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?

sirclueless 14y ago

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).