Tag Archives: Hotmail

A Brief History of Hotmail, or An Example of Early Viral Marketing

TechCrunch has an interesting article up, titled PS: I Love You. Get Your Free Email at Hotmail, which is an excerpt from the new book Viral Loop: From Facebook To Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves.

The post covers the early days of the (ye olde) Hotmail service, well before Microsoft acquired the startup company, back when it was spelled “HoTMaiL.”

Smith wrote it down. He wasn’t sure about the “hot” part, but given everything else this seemed the best candidate. Then he noticed it contained the letters “HTML,” the acronym for “HyperText Markup Language,” the lingua franca of web pages.

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