Does Using an AOL Email Address Suggest You're a Tech Dinosaur?

Nerval's Lobster writes: Despite years of layoffs and tumbling net worth, AOL seemed to get a new lease on life this week when Verizon bought it for $4.4 billion. But even if AOL's still alive, using an AOL email address has long been seen as a way of signaling that you're stuck in the 1990s. A recent analysis of Dice data found that a mere 1.8 percent of those registering for the site used an AOL address, versus 55 percent for Gmail. For the past several years, Websites from Gizmodo to Lifehacker have all declared that still using an AOL email address is counterproductive, to put it mildly. But is that actually true? Do the people in your life and work actually care whether you use AOL, Hotmail, Gmail, or a custom address, or is the idea of 'email bias' an overblown myth?

Comments

What does it say about you?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Does Using an AOL Email Address Suggest You're a Tech Dinosaur?

Yes, if you're an asshole. "If it ain't broken don't fix it" only applies to popular things.

Re:What does it say about you?

[RJFerret]

Maintaining a consistent email address? Good.

Using a service that scans your correspondence to market directly to you? Bad.

People who value their, and my, privacy? Good.

I'd rather communicate with an AOL user than gmail user, and I'm not an overly private individual.

Worse is a company like Google opening up that door encourages other companies to start scanning what was previously considered private.