Email Address Prejudice

Lifehacker wrote about your Email Address Prejudice some weeks ago. And I find myself thinking about this blog post when I write emails to friends using some of the old email services like AOL, Hotmail and in Norway online.no and c2i.net. For me the email and especially the domain are important. I have been using the rygh.no-domain for email the last 9 years. Having my personal domain shows the ownership of the address to whoever is sending me emails. But I still find the Gmail interface being very attractive, so I have hocked my domain up with Google Apps. Using cutting edge technology and being up-to-date is important for me – and for me people who stay on Hotmail and other “legacy email providers” is showing me that they don’t care. And for a lot people that is fine. I don’t care that they don’t care. But they put themselves in a specific category when it comes to technology. To give an example – I wouldn't give a web designer the assignment to redesign my website if his contact information included a Hotmail address. Gmail works for now but the grace period is fading!

Update 21:21CET:
Just read about the facebook planning to launch webmail. Do you think facebook webmail will be a hit for the mass market? Or do you think it will get a marginal share of the user? I am skeptic. I feel that I would like to keep the possibility to walk away from facebook if they do to drastic changes to their privacy policy. It makes sense for facebook as they can keep users on site for even more communication and social activities. However... I don't like the idea that they push a mail-account on me. I would like to prefer where I get emails. And I don't feel that a facebook.com-mail address will be something I would like to share to anyone. Do you think "fmail" be something big?