Hotmail is 10 this month
Yes it’s another web birthday: Hotmail is 10 years old this month! Woo-hoo…
Officially launched by entrepreneurs Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith in November 1996, it has become the most used web-based email service on the planet.
As seems fitting after a decade, Hotmail is evolving over the next few months to fall in line with Windows Live branding – becoming (wait for it) Windows Live Mail. Original, huh?
Windows Live Mail will be faster, simpler, safer, and offer greater connection. Yes, it’ll just be better, or so we’re told.
For now, here’s some birthday facts about Hotmail:
1. In 1996, 56,041 people signed up for a Hotmail account (to make it easier to comprehend that, apparently that’s the size of Taunton in Somerset. Not very helpful if you’ve not been to Taunton, though, so just imagine any other town with 56,000 residents…)
2. 43% of PC owners in the UK have a Hotmail account.
3. 1 billion emails are delivered to Hotmail accounts each day (ahh yeah but how many of those are spam?)
4. 80 million emails are sent by Hotmail users each day.
5. On average, Hotmail users keep 137 emails in their inbox at any one time, 15 times more than the average number of SMS messages we have stored in our mobile phones.
6. Hotmail is used in nearly every country and is available in 17 languages.
7. Over one fifth of the UK population has made friends via MSN Hotmail.
Sad to say (or maybe not) that I am one of the 57% of Britons that doesn’t have a Hotmail account.
Related stories: Microsoft to offer Office Live UK beta from November 15th | Image email spam arrives in its billions | Top 10 spam email subject lines: phishing galore
