How did mail.com get its start?
The year is 1995. Sony releases the PlayStation in North America and Microsoft launches Windows 95. Toy Story, the first full-length computer animated feature film, is in theaters. The dot-com boom is just revving up, and although the DVD format is developed this year, it won’t be available to consumers until 1996. And mail.com is formed as Vanity Mail Services, part of Globecomm Inc., by Gerald Gorman and Gary Millin.
The founders’ strategy was to register more than 500 domains, setting their company apart from nineties giants like AOL and CompuServe, who offered users a range of online services in conjunction with an email address featuring the company domain name. If you wanted something unique, you had to look elsewhere – and many of mail.com’s users jumped at the chance to create a free email account with a fun name like jessica@elvisfan.com or burnish their professional image with michael.smith@accountant.com.