This weekends Yahoo!Xtra bubble debacle left me wondering about Telecom. I men this is no inexperienced start up her, they’re a long term player with significant engineering and marketing nous. How could they possibly get it so wrong?

As others have commented, why oh why did they not introduce the new platform as a beta, test it thoroughly while still offering boring old traditional webmail and then, at some point in the future, make the decision whether to ditch version 1.0 or not. As others have pointed out, other webmail providers run traditional and beta platform contemporaneously so its not like it can’t technically be done or anything.

I guess it’s the sort of thing that we’ve come to expect of the P&T – no doubt someone will be offered up as a sacrificial lamb at some stage.

The other thing I wondered about is why on earth people still use ISP webmail at all. I mean email addresses are readily obtained, be they gmail, geekzone, yahoo etc etc. Tying your email address to the ISP you connect through is the craziest thing ever. A number of my non geek friends have the situation where they are unable to change ISP’s becuase they are worried about losing mail. They’ve bought into a fantastic model (for the ISP’s) – gain a captive market and lock them in.

Please people, acquire an independent email address….

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

1 Comment
  • An independent email address AND hosting.

    I recently rationalised somebody’s email and it was just going to their Xtra POP account. When email is so critical for one’s business, why do people skimp and get by on the seat of their pants with ISP-provided unreliable email?

    Oh wait, we’re the number-8 fencing wire on-the-smell-of-an-oily-rag-and-proud-of-it nation!

    “Free biscuits? How many can I have? …”

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