EnigmatriX
Discoverer
Microsoft Product Planner Richard Sim is excited. His baby, Windows Live Mail BETA (WL Mail), just reached one million subscribers, after a year of trying. By his own admission, Job One is keeping WL Mail subscribers happy. So Sim says he reads every single comment he gets.
And Complaint Numero Uno? Microsoft is too stingy with the WL Mail sign-up invitations. Web masters use them as traffic builders, while spammers, phishers, blog trolls and other free email account accumulators love to collect them.
WL Mail's ads leave many subscribers cold, too. One commenter on Sims' blog gripes:
Is it really necessary to have 2 massive ads on the screen? Together they take up about 1/3 of the screen real-estate.
Another user helpfully suggests that Microsofties replace the graphic-heavy ads with text.
Meanwhile, others claim that when they tried to return to Hotmail because of WL Mail's sluggish performance, they lost all their contacts.
As for those complaining that WL Mail doesn't work with Firefox, chill out. Users write that even some Internet Explorer 6 configurations can't handle the WL Mail Experience style sheet, and/or crash when adding text to the top of previously saved draft letters.
But building a giant messaging service isn't all that easy. Windows Live developer Omar Shahine notes, "Scaling a service is hard. Especially one that's only a year old. Next stop 10 million."
Ten million? In a world where Microsoft boosters broadly claim that 100 million Firefox downloads, or 20 million Thunderbird downloads, are chickenfeed, even ten million WL Mail sign-ups sounds fairly modest, especially when you have around 40 million Hotmail subscribers to use as a springboard. Unless the WL Mail team doesn't really want Hotmail's hand-me-downs... Which is perfectly understandable as Hotmail has long been a haven for spammers, phishers and other ne'er do wells... allegedly.
When many legitimate users have 5 or more email accounts, and black hats are running tens-to-hundreds... it's surprising that it took the world's largest software company a full year to scratch its way to giving away one million freebies.
Source:
http://www.emailbattles.com/archive/battles/email_aadbdeedfg_aa/
And Complaint Numero Uno? Microsoft is too stingy with the WL Mail sign-up invitations. Web masters use them as traffic builders, while spammers, phishers, blog trolls and other free email account accumulators love to collect them.
WL Mail's ads leave many subscribers cold, too. One commenter on Sims' blog gripes:
Is it really necessary to have 2 massive ads on the screen? Together they take up about 1/3 of the screen real-estate.
Another user helpfully suggests that Microsofties replace the graphic-heavy ads with text.
Meanwhile, others claim that when they tried to return to Hotmail because of WL Mail's sluggish performance, they lost all their contacts.
As for those complaining that WL Mail doesn't work with Firefox, chill out. Users write that even some Internet Explorer 6 configurations can't handle the WL Mail Experience style sheet, and/or crash when adding text to the top of previously saved draft letters.
But building a giant messaging service isn't all that easy. Windows Live developer Omar Shahine notes, "Scaling a service is hard. Especially one that's only a year old. Next stop 10 million."
Ten million? In a world where Microsoft boosters broadly claim that 100 million Firefox downloads, or 20 million Thunderbird downloads, are chickenfeed, even ten million WL Mail sign-ups sounds fairly modest, especially when you have around 40 million Hotmail subscribers to use as a springboard. Unless the WL Mail team doesn't really want Hotmail's hand-me-downs... Which is perfectly understandable as Hotmail has long been a haven for spammers, phishers and other ne'er do wells... allegedly.
When many legitimate users have 5 or more email accounts, and black hats are running tens-to-hundreds... it's surprising that it took the world's largest software company a full year to scratch its way to giving away one million freebies.
Source:
http://www.emailbattles.com/archive/battles/email_aadbdeedfg_aa/