Microsoft’s online email provider Hotmail turns 15 years old this week and the service’s founders intended its release to highlight the symbolism of its independence from more traditional e-mail models. Hotmail service would be snatched up by Microsoft and housed under the software giant’s MSN umbrella. Microsoft with Hotmail is focusing on a steady stream of recently introduced features, including Sweep, Aliases, inline video viewing from YouTube, Vimeo and more, IE9 pinned sites integration and checks spam folder for misfiled birthday wishes………….
Hotmail has turned 15 years old this week. It may have fallen out of style, but the web mail service is still chugging along and Microsoft is continuing to make improvements to the platform. Still, there was a time long ago when Microsoft didn’t own Hotmail and the service was one of the few, if not the leading provider of free Web-based email. Many people laugh and scoff at Hotmail, but it’s still one of the largest email providers on the Web and many people still love and cling to their Hotmail accounts. The service has over 360 million unique users each month, and according to Microsoft, they filter out 98% of all spam messages that come in to the service. Microsoft is playing up their recent improvements to Hotmail, like making it 10x faster than last year, integrating Facebook chat and the ability to import and manage accounts from Gmail, Yahoo and AOL all in the same interface. They’re also touting Hotmail’s integration with Windows Live SkyDrive, a kind of Dropbox competitor as a quick and easy way to manage attachments like photos and video without having to worry about them clogging up your inbox. However, even with all of those features, many will assure you that those 360 million uniques are either spammers with hundreds of accounts, or people who are simply keep their old email accounts live, but have long ago moved on. Microsoft says they have big plans in store for Hotmail, which is good news when competing services like Gmail continue to evolve and draw new users.
To celebrate 15 years of Hotmail, Microsoft has released 15 interesting facts about the service:
- Hotmail in 2011 is not Hotmail in 2005 (or Hotmail in 2010, for that matter.)
- Hotmail is really, really fast – 10-20x faster than last year, and even faster than Gmail in certain areas.
- Hotmail filters out more than 98% of spam – 5.5 billion messages a day
- Hotmail works great on your smartphone, (Windows Phone especially but iOS and many other smartphones too) – syncing email, calendar, and contacts.
- You can chat with your Facebook friends right from Hotmail
- Watch videos linked from YouTube, Hulu, and many other services right from within your email message.
- Like conversation view? We’ve got it. Hate it? It’s easy to disable
- You can import your current account and continue to use the address while Hotmail manages your inbox (Gmail, Y! Plus, AOL.)
- “Sweep” allows you to filter hundreds of messages from multiple senders withonly a few clicks
- Get unread email notifications on your Windows 7 taskbar by pinning with IE9.
- Why worry about low attachment limits when sending photos? SkyDrive support lets you send hundreds of photos per mail.
- Hotmail utilizes Office Web Apps for easy document editing and sharing – don’t settle for lesser software.
- Use Netflix? Hotmail ActiveViews let you get more done in your inbox with interactive email from a number of partners.
- We’re the largest free email service on the planet – with 360 million unique users per month.
- We’re 15 years old – and the best is yet to come.
