E-mail, or electronic mail, was one of the first social
mediums available to visitors in cyber space.
Developed by Ray Tomlinson in 1971, e-mail originally allowed users to only
post mail messages to individual accounts across a single network. The
supporting software was quickly circulated among the computer sites on ARPANET,
a pre-Internet version of the World Wide Web that was used to connect a network
of defense department computers. By 1972, e-mail was the most widely used
application on the ARPANET network. Ever since, e-mail has been the most
powerful and popular of all social computing software.
By the year 1999, the heyday of the Internet, over 610
billion e-mails were sent worldwide. E-mail can be read and sent from a network
computer, across even the very slowest of modem connected web links. It is so
basic to modern computing that, for almost all Internet users, it is the first
thing they check when they log on to their computer. E-mail has been widely
credited with fueling the surge in Internet usage as many people have sought
online access first as a way to access electronic communications with friends,
family and colleagues. According to statistics gathered in a study conducted by
the
Despite the enduring popularity of e-mail, there have been
relatively few attempts to create a map that tracks the structure and content
of e-mail. Interfaces for e-mail clients are much the same today as they were a
decade ago. Appropriately for a predominantly te
The power of e-mail for one-to-one communication can easily
be used for one-to-many interactions, as well as many-to-many conversations.
This is achieved via the use of mailing lists, list servers, and bulletin
boards. A mailing list is a one-to-many communication medium where the list
owner can send a single message to every member on a list. A message can
therefore be delivered to hundreds of subscribers with no e
Here, Ron E. Porter says here about the history of Email or
Electronic mails and how it can serve as an objective for Web Traffic Moneti