Yahoo: The Return of Rocketmail!

Blaise Zerega wonders if there is a link between email and space travel: Yahoo's announcement that it is bringing back the Rocketmail domain and introducing a ymail domain for its email service is very smart. The company already claims 260 million email users, and this move is sure to help that number grow. And as I've (Tech)observed before, building community is what Yahoo does best and needs to focus on -- not Carl Icahn.

For those in the know, reviving the name@rocketmail.com format is kind of like the rebirth of cool. Rocketmail was the free email service offered by Four11. Yahoo acquired it in 1997 for $92 million, and used it to build Yahoo mail. If you're at all like me, over the years you've had some envy of people who were still using rocketmail email addresses. Score one to Yahoo for reclaiming some geek cred.

The ymail domain benefit is more along on the lines of street cred. Ymail is definitely easier to type, similar to what's used for mobile yahoo mail, and well -- it's what it's what imagine all the cool kids would want their email address to be. (Yahoo.com as part of one's email address always felt kind of impersonal.) Admittedly, there's an element of me-too-ism here. Google was first with gmail. And now Yahoo has ymail. Call it copycatting but so what? Ymail makes sense as a domain.

Now, the big decision - do I change my yahoo mail accounts to rocketmail or ymail? What would you do?

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