Time to Break Up With Old Email Accounts?

Wednesday, 17 November 2010 | by Pat's Picks

There’s a funny column in the Chicago Tribune this morning about breaking up with old email accounts. Columnist Mary Schmidt says when she dumped her AOL account for a Gmail one a few years back she didn’t realize it was like “the online equivalent of Botox injections, that a Gmail account branded a user as young, hip, a player.” (She was prompted to switch she says by the realization that if an @aol.com followed your email name, “you may as well be wearing white disco pants.”)

The pain of my breakup with my old Compuserve address (74357.2630@compuserve.com) is the reason I started running my personal email through a domain that I own. But I’m in the minority. Now that Facebook has upped the ante, threatening to do away with email as we know it, Schmidt wonders if Gmail users might soon feel like they’re at the wrong party..

Read more about Facebook’s “Social Inbox” from yesterday’s edition.