:: Fighting POP Culture :: History ::

Have you ever wondered what was so ingenious about Hotmail?

I did. And over time I came to understand it wasn't the fact it was free, the viral marketing, the intuitive web based interface or the accessibility. All those were what made it a huge consumer success. Ingenuity was elsewhere.

Internet evolution was very good at eliminating non-effective methods of communication and data access. Gopher is an example. Telnet is another. However it couldn't handle non-efficient methods that were at the same time extremely effective.

POP3 and SMTP, the building blocks of the e-mail system, are probably the best example of something that is very effective and non-efficient at the same time. Everybody uses e-mail, so it is effective, but in order to provide the service a huge non-efficient system is running.

Files are copied again and again, quoted, kept in storage, quoted again, kept on servers, kept in sent mail folders, downloaded to PCs, kept again, sent again, quoted etc. etc.. A huge pile of dead bytes with no usage moves across the network. Just think how many copies of GADOL_XXX_Watch_Alone.mpeg are out there, a zillion?

The guys at Hotmail couldn't imagine they would have so many users, so they just couldn't imagine how ingenious they were. When a Hotmail user mails another Hotmail user there is no need to go through the non-efficient mailing method. All is needed is a database pointer update. Just a pointer. No more.

And this was ingenuity.

So the fight against POP culture began. And it is still on. Stay tuned.

Wadi Writer #1 (Gray)
WadiList@mail.com