What’s old is new

Posted June 19th, 2008 at 9:38 am by John Kremer, Yahoo! Mail

 23 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News

Ever tried to sign up for a new email account, only to find that the name you want is unavailable? We hear you. As the most popular email service in the world, Yahoo! Mail has more than a quarter of a billion users worldwide *. That’s a LOT of email addresses in use already. With that in mind, we’re making millions of desirable email addresses available today with the launch of two shiny new domains: ymail.com and rocketmail.com.

If “rocketmail” rings a bell, it’s because it’s vintage Internet. Back in the ’90s, RocketMail was one of the very first free Webmail services. Yahoo! acquired it in 1997 and built the first version of Yahoo! Mail based on RocketMail technology. Some of the original RocketMail users chose to keep their RocketMail IDs to show that they had been among the first users of Webmail. Now, like so many beloved classics that are hip again –- cupcakes, big sunglasses, Indiana Jones, The New Kids on the Block –- RocketMail is back for a new generation to enjoy.

These new domains will offer the same great Yahoo! Mail experience, like unlimited storage, integrated instant messaging, free text messaging, and localized versions around the world. And, as always, a Yahoo! email address works for everything across Yahoo!, from checking Mail to using Messenger, Flickr, Groups, Finance and more. The added bonus is that with these two new domains, you’ll have the chance to land your perfect email address to help reflect who you are – which is what the majority of you are looking for according to a recent Yahoo! survey conducted by Harris Interactive**.

So whether your style is brand spanking new (ymail.com), hip vintage (rocketmail.com), or comfortable classic (yahoo.com), surf on over to http://new.mail.yahoo.com/addresses and get that email address you’ve always wanted.      

John Kremer
Vice President, Yahoo! Mail

*According to comScore Media Matrix, April 2008.

**In a survey of 2,035 online adults ages 18+ conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Yahoo!, 56% of online adults indicated that they want their email address to reflect who they are.

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23 Comments Add your own

Manas | June 19th, 2008 at 10:28 am

This made my day… ;)

Getting my new e-mail id now. :)

Apurva Mehta | June 19th, 2008 at 10:43 am

This is great news. It would be even better if I could add a new id to my existing Yahoo account. I don’t see the option to that yet, and I am looking forward to it!

Apurva

Bobbie | June 19th, 2008 at 2:23 pm

Please please please let old Rocketmail users reactivate their old email accounts! That was my first email account and my favorite before the whole switchover push to yahoo.

Ankur Banerjee | June 19th, 2008 at 2:36 pm

What about things like messenger? Like, right now, if I have to add someone then I simply need to enter their ID name. Now, will we have to enter the whole ID with extension? Because the people owning mail@yahoo.com and mail@ymail.com may not be the same people – so during sign-in to Yahoo! sites and while logging on in Messenger, we need to mention extension now?

rendy | June 19th, 2008 at 5:39 pm

yahoo still sucks, the defer makes me mad…

YDRIVE | June 19th, 2008 at 7:51 pm

Indeed, and congratulations! :-)

aw | June 19th, 2008 at 10:53 pm

But where’s the IMAP support?

fenwayguy | June 20th, 2008 at 12:03 am

Rather than adding a ymail.com or rocketmail.com address to an existing Yahoo ID, it appears you have to create a completely separate account. That means re-subscribing to your Yahoo Groups, re-building all your My Yahoo pages, basically re-customizing Yahoo from scratch.

Is that a feature or a bug?

Matt Cox | June 20th, 2008 at 4:29 am

I know it defeats the point a bit, but I would like to be able to add one of these new domain addresses to my current Y! Account – and manage both addresses under the same account…

…not have to register another Y! Account.

Mirela | June 20th, 2008 at 2:48 pm

1.
I’m happy to see that one of my dreams (and also the dream of many other Yahoo users) is now

came true, the RocketMail.com domain it is again available, and this is not the only good news, also another new domain Ymail.com is available.

Mirela | June 20th, 2008 at 2:51 pm

2.
I just want to observe that these three domains Yahoo.com, Ymail.com and RocketMail.com are not the only domains owned by Yahoo.

You also already offer free mail on other domains like Yahoo.fr, Yahoo.ca, etc.

So, you can do more than triple your Yahoo Mail addresses universe, you can made them virtually infinite by permitting sign up for Yahoo.ca, Yahoo.fr etc. addresses that are not yet used even if an Yahoo ID containing the part before @ was already taken.

(e.g. Let’s say that I have the mirela@yahoo.com address, well the Yahoo ID: mirela is taken, but the Yahoo Mail addresses mirela@yahoo.ca, mirela@yahoo.fr are still unused, so
somebody can sign up for these addresses)

Mirela | June 20th, 2008 at 2:54 pm

3.
I see that the new style of Yahoo IDs trend to be the same with the Yahoo Mail address

(e.g. Yahoo ID: mirela@yahoo.com),
but this kind of Yahoo ID makes us vulnerable,

our addresses will be known easily by many people,

for example all our Yahoo Messenger contacts will know our Yahoo Mail address, this is not fair,

all they must know is our Yahoo ID without not the entirely yahoo mail address.

Mirela | June 20th, 2008 at 3:02 pm

4.
Possible solution to this problem (avoiding publicity to the mail address):

Let’s say that I have signed up for a RocketMail address and I have the following address:
m.mirela@rocketmail.com
Another person has already the
m.mirela@yahoo.com address
and the Yahoo ID: m.mirela.

So I can’t have the m.mirela Yahoo ID because is it taken by another person, and I don’t think that the m.mirela@rocketmail.com it is a good Yahoo ID because this will make me more vulnerable to spam emails.

The solution I see now is adding an optional two or three letters (or numbers) marker to the new IDs created from now on, this marker giving also a short name for our profile.
To keep the things simple, this marker should be optional, the users that don’t need to hide their address can use their mail address as Yahoo IDs.
Also, if the name before @ is still available as a Yahoo ID, the user don’t need such a marker.
–

Example:
Name before the @:
m.mirela
Domain choose for Mail address:
rocketmail.com

If the simple Yahoo ID (m.mirela) is not available the user will be asked to choose a marker for his address (to hide the domain of his address).

Marker choose:
mi

Well, between the name before the @ and the marker we need to have a separator.

The best separator could be even the “@” sign.

Finally, after this modified sign up process the user will have 2 Yahoo IDs:
- a short one: m.mirela@mi
(formed using the name before @, the separator and the marker)
- a long one, identical with the email address: m.mirela@rocketmail.com
Both these two IDs will correspond to the same Yahoo Profile.

Maybe this kind of sign up algorithm looks complicated, but is not.
Will be easily understand by an end user, and will produce much more combinations than the system used in present.

:) A possible message when asking for a marker:
“The Yahoo ID: yyyyyy is already taken, but the Yahoo Mail Address yyyyyy@yahoo.com is still available.
You could have this address!
Choose below your marker (domain replacer) to hide your domain from your Yahoo ID, or continue the sign up process with the Yahoo ID yyyyyy@yahoo.com (Caution: If you don’t choose a marker all your Y!M contacts will see your mail address)
“

Mirela | June 20th, 2008 at 3:12 pm

5.
Another way to gain new clients is by taking (purchasing) other email providers from different countries (well known in their countries) and adding their base of clients to the Yahoo web-mail huge database.
By purchasing this kind of email providers you could gain also other new domains and a plus of popularity in these countries.
In the most of cases these email providers will have an offer with less facilities than the Yahoo Mail, so the clients will be pleased to become Yahoo Mail clients.

(The default Yahoo IDs for this kind of addresses will be the entire mail address, sure, the domain could be replaced with a marker in such cases too).

Also when such a service is purchased the users added can be encouraged to merge the address owned at Yahoo (if they have one) with the address from their local provider.

All these rows from above are showing that I LOVE YAHOO, I hope that my Ideas will be followed and Yahoo will give the best experience for their users.

Kind Regards,
Mirela

gag | June 20th, 2008 at 7:34 pm

activate this mail for this user at this location or locations and this mail is valid for date, day, month or anytime
receives geomail when at a particular mall or location

mail portability in n out of secondlife

Amaan Goyal | June 22nd, 2008 at 10:18 pm

I have always believed the email address represents your image and some times it is frustrating when you cannot get an email address with the desired username . It is great news for people bugged by this issue. Excellent initiative.

Steve Swales | June 23rd, 2008 at 5:17 pm

Contrary to what John said above, the new e-mail accounts DO NOT work with Yahoo Groups. If you try to join or create a Group with one of these, it throws you into the “new subscription” flow, and (if you’re not careful and bail out) you end up with ANOTHER regular old @yahoo.com account. I guess no-one told the Groups team this was coming, or they ignored the warning. Maybe the Mail Engineering SVP should sit down with the Groups Engineering SVP and discuss it.

Multicolor Diaries | June 29th, 2008 at 3:31 pm

Great stuff !!

Nicki Dugan | July 3rd, 2008 at 2:30 pm

@ankur banerjee: The new IDs do indeed work with Yahoo! Messenger. Just log in with the complete email address (ie, joeuser@rocketmail.com) and IM away. You can read more here.

بازی و قیم | July 22nd, 2008 at 3:23 pm

nice and good

جک و اس ام اس | July 22nd, 2008 at 10:24 pm

thank you and thank you agin

atrisk | July 24th, 2008 at 10:33 pm

As an original and still current user of rocketmail, that status of “first users of webmail” is now gone. Maybe Yahoo can separate the originals from the new ones. There can’t be to many users since they stop adding in ‘97

Free Advice | October 1st, 2008 at 11:10 am

Here’s some good advice to Yahoo – remove all the stale accounts and you’ll save money and have IDs available. My account was somehow locked out years ago and I’ve never been able to get back in. Hundreds of emails to Yahoo support all going back to the password reset page which wouldn’t work. An account I had for years I haven’t been able to access since at least 2002. That’s at least six years of dormant activity for an account that is still locked out and not available.