You’ve Got Mail! A Trip Down Memory Lane
When and why do you use email? For many people, email is how we communicate and share information between colleagues and friends. As we discussed in the previous chapter, email has become so engrained in our daily lives that most people have probably forgotten how they accomplished anything in a time without email. In the early 1960s there were fewer than 2,000 terminal computers that could send computer-to-computer messages (and all terminals resided in labs at universities). Today, there are over 4 billion email addresses accessed from desktops, tablets, and mobile phones. In just over 50 years, what was originally designed as an efficient way for computer scientists to communicate has become the lifeblood of everyday communication for business and personal use.
In this chapter, we will look back at how these early messages began and the key inflection points that made email accessible, first to larger corporations and government, and later to everyone else. We will also discuss the origin of the term spam and the need for the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. We will finish with the birth and development of social media and how this phenomenon relates to email marketing.
We Begin at the Beginning
If we think of email as electronic messages, one could argue that the first email was sent via the telegraph over a century ago. However, our more modern conception of email (where we send messages from one computer to another) dates back to the mid-1960s and early 1970s. In the 1960s, computers were enormous machines living in the basements of a few academic institutions and large organizations. Users interacted with the computer (mainframe, see Figure 2.1) through “dummy terminals” (see Figure 2.2). These dummy terminals had no data storage of their own and worked remotely on the mainframe.
Figure 2.1 IBM 7094 Mainframe
Source: http://computer-history.info/Page4.dir/pages/IBM.7090.dir/images/7094.console.corner.jpg
Figure 2.2 Example of a “dummy terminal”
Source: www-hpc.cea.fr/en/complexe/history.htm
In those days, mainframe computers could not handle more than one operator at a time. Thus, computer users worked in shifts. In 1961, computer scientists at MIT began developing the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS), or the ability for multiple users to use the mainframe computer from different terminals at the same time (Walden and Van Vleck 2011). In 1963, a government agency, Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), funded MIT to further explore mainframe time-sharing, and by 1965 CTSS service allowed up to 30 simultaneous users. As might be expected, the different users needed a way to leave messages for each other regarding different projects or activities they were working on and they would do so using paper notes. Of course, the use of physical mailboxes introduced the risk of messages being lost or ignored due to inconvenience, and alternatives such as voicemail and answering machines had yet to become commercially viable. In 1965, Tom Van Vleck and Noel Morris developed the first email commands to allow users on the same mainframe to leave messages for each other, and thus MAILBOX, one of the first electronic messaging systems, was born.
A few years later on August 30, 1969, the predecessor of the Internet, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), came “online” at UCLA. Researchers from Bolt, Beranek, and Newman (formerly BBN, now Raytheon BBN), many of whom had ties to MIT, built the software and hardware that allowed for the first communication over a wired network of two computers at different locations (UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute). Thus began network computing.
Origin of @
Up to this point, messages could be sent only to users on the same computer mainframe. To send messages across a network to a user on a different computer mainframe, some form of “address” was needed to pinpoint a mail location. In 1972, while working for BBN, a contractor for ARPANET, Ray Tomlinson adapted the messaging program SNDMSG to be able to send a message to any computer on the network. He chose the “@” symbol to designate which computer the operator’s username lived on. Thus to send a message to a user, one would simply type the person’s username followed by the @ symbol and then the name of the mainframe the user was operating. Hence, Ray Tomlinson is often credited as inventing the first electronic message between two computers.
The Late 1970s and the Great Email Debate
Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, the computer network grew rapidly, and more and more contributors developed common codes and protocols to enhance the utility of computers. Much like open source code communities function today, these programmers were all working on and modifying many of the same computer actions. By the late 1970s, electronic messaging expanded to communicating across different external computer networks, each with its own coding variation. Thus, a critical contribution, similar to the introduction of the “@” symbol, was the introduction of RFC 733 in 1977. RFC 733 resulted from a collaboration of Dave Crocker, John Vittal, Kenneth Pogran, and D. Austin Henderson, and was essentially a specification that called for the standardization of messaging formats across different networks. Hence, when we look at the evolution of email on the computer, we can thank people such as Van Vleck, Crocker, Vittal, and many others for investing and modifying the functionalities we take for granted today.
By the late 1970s, the use of messaging and computers was expanding. In 1976, Queen Elizabeth became the first head of state to send an email (and 29 years later she sends her first tweet!). In the mid- to late 1970s, some of the first commercial, personal computers began to hit the consumer market. For example, the first Apple computer was released in 1976 and the more popular Apple II was introduced around 1978. The use of computers in organizations began to expand, and with it, the need for interoffice communications. This brings us to the origin of the great debate over who invented “email.”
In 1978, a 14-year-old computer whiz named (V.A.) Shiva Ayyadurai was challenged to create an interoffice electronic mail system for the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ). Ayyadurai ultimately created a system that replicated interoffice paper mail and called it email. He filed an application for copyright in 1982. In recent years, Ayyadurai’s claim as the inventor of email has set off a debate about what can be classified as email and who the “true” inventor is. Certainly each contributor during this time period can lay claim to creating some aspect of email, and most of those creations depended on the work that came before them. So, it is hard to say that a single person created email.
Through the late 1970s, computer messaging and email were largely used for communication between programmers and coworkers. However, the way we use email would change in 1978 when Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager at DEC (also known as Digital Equipment Corporation, a major computer company that existed from the 1960s to the 1990s), used the messaging system for something different. Thuerk sent a message to 400 users over the ARPANET, trying to sell a new DEC computer and, as you might expect, received several angry responses. As a result, Thuerk is known as the father of spam. On the flip side, he sold $13 million worth of equipment because of that mailing (Crocker 2012). Although showing early success, the term spam did not become popular until the 1990s and was added to the New Oxford Dictionary in 1998.
During this same time period, Ward Christensen and Randy Seuss developed the first bulletin board systems (BBS), in the midst of the harsh blizzard of 1978 in Chicago. Called the computerized bulletin board system (CBBS), it was the first publicly accessible messaging system. Since it was created before graphical interfaces were available, it is a text-based system (see Figure 2.3). Of course, once the Internet became prevalent and web-based email accessible to all, BBS became less popular. However, BBS are still in use in places where the Internet is less accessible.
Figure 2.3 Example of a bulletin board system
Source: www.ventureevolved.com/do-not-take-this-software-era-for-granted-pt-2/
With the growth of personal computers from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, the growth of email technologies came with it. Most of the email systems available during this time were proprietary (e.g., MCI Mail, Telecom Gold, AppleLink) and a user needed to be a subscriber to that system and could send messages only to other subscribers.
The 1980s and the Introduction of SMTP
By 1981, there were four major email networks that connected universities, corporations, and other major institutions: ARPANET (the Internet), UUCP, BITnet, and CSnet (Partridge 2008). Each of the networks had their own communities. For example, CSnet was developed and used by the computer science research community while BITnet was developed by university computing centers to exchange their own information. Although using the “@” symbol was an accepted protocol, what appeared to the left and right of the @ was not standardized across these networks. Thus, an email sender had to know not only which network the receiver was on but also the exact nomenclature for that network. Thus, emails often could be lost or sent to the wrong person altogether.
A critical breakthrough for email came in 1982 with Jon Postel’s publication of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol1 (SMTP). SMTP is a connection-oriented, text-based protocol used to facilitate the sending of emails across different computer networks and servers. It uses a set of codes to simplify how networks communicate and route messages, thus creating a standard for different networks to use and solving the aforementioned addressing problem. Working with a Mail Transfer Agent, SMTP essentially set the rules for how messages would move from one person’s computer to a network server and across to another network server, where the message was stored until the receiver picked it up from their computer. Essentially, SMTP is thought of as a store and forward process. Although SMTP has been enhanced since 1982, it remains fundamentally the same today.
Although access to online networks was initially the domain of the military, large academic and research institutions, and large commercial companies, in the 1980s private companies began to sell access to computer networks to individuals. One of the first online service providers was CompuServe, which launched access to its network services in 1982. CompuServe, formerly known as CompuServe Information Service or CIS, was originally founded to provide computer-processing support to Golden United Life Insurance and operated an independent business in computer time-sharing. However, CompuServe soon recognized potential demand from consumers, and by the early 1990s it became well known by most computer users.
Around this same time in the late 1980s, America Online (AOL) launched its online service to the public. Born from earlier services called Quantum Link (for Commodore computers) and AppleLink (for Apple and Macintosh computers), AOL quickly became popular and is remembered for its announcements, “You’ve Got Mail!” The cultural meaning of AOL’s email service at the time helped inspire the 1998 hit romantic comedy movie You’ve Got Mail, starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks (the movie website is still live: http://youvegotmail.warnerbros.com/). When awareness and interest in online services began to take off in the early 1990s, AOL was the major provider of access to homes across the United States. In fact, by 1997, almost half of all U.S. homes that accessed the Internet used AOL (Madrigal 2014). Services such as CompuServe and AOL provided access to forums, online communities, email, games, and other activities. In some ways, these services are the predecessors to social media networks like Facebook and MySpace.
Another evolution in email that began to take shape in the late 1980s was the introduction of email-specific software and organizational products. In 1988, Steve Dorner created Eudora, an email management program that provided one of the first graphical interfaces. This was a free program that was first used primarily with the Macintosh operating system. One year later, the first release of the Lotus Notes email software sold over 35,000 copies (Left 2002). Both of these events marked a new era in how consumers accessed and interacted with email. One particular advantage of a program like Eudora or Lotus Notes was that it offered the ability to filter spam emails and detect fraudulent links. These programs stand as predecessors to Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook, and others.
The 1990s and the Birth of the Internet as We Know it
Access to the online world quickly changed in the 1990s. In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee (now Sir Timothy, as he was knighted in 2004) and his team at CERN (also known as the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and largest Internet node in Europe at that time) created hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) and hypertext markup language (HTML), the building blocks for creating and retrieving web pages on the Internet. Essentially, HTTP is a protocol that allows a client (individual computer), using some form of web browser on their computer, to request information from applications living on large computer servers (Internet nodes) and retrieve content in the form of web pages written in hypertext markup language (HTML) along with other files and content. This is the technology that underpins the World Wide Web as we know it today.
The rapid development of the World Wide Web brought changes to email as well. In 1996, Hotmail became the first web-based email service, meaning that consumers no longer had to sign up with proprietary services or closed networks such as America Online or CompuServe. Hotmail was such an immediate hit that Microsoft purchased the company for approximately $400 million in 1997. In the same year, Microsoft also released Outlook, formerly Internet Mail, for the first time.
Of course, with an increase in access to email came an increase in junk email, (i.e., spam). The low (or no cost) benefits of sending an email, compared to traditional postal costs, quickly convinced marketers and businesses of all sorts to follow in the footsteps of Gary Thuerk and send unsolicited emails to thousands of people on the Internet. The first documented use of the term spam occurred in 1993 when Richard Depew attempted to post an item to a user group on Usenet (news.admin.policy), but, due to a software bug, the post repeated itself 200 times. This effectively drowned out any other postings for a period of time. Although in this case it was an accident, drowning out other messages as a practice was not new. In the 1980s, abusive users of message boards, chat rooms, or multiuser dungeon games (the predecessors to World of War Craft) would fill the message space of rivals with lines from a Monty Python skit involving SPAM. In the skit, Viking patrons drown out all other conversations in a café with a song in which they chant “SPAM, SPAM, SPAM,” the main ingredient on the café menu (see Figure 2.4). Thus the term spam, or spamming, became symbolic of “something that keeps repeating and repeating to great annoyance” (Internet Society 2014). The Hormel brand, maker of the food item, does not actively object to the use of the word spam in digital contexts but still reserves the right to use the capitalized SPAM for their product.
Figure 2.4 YouTube clip of Monty Python SPAM
Source: https://youtube/anwy2MPT5RE
The first major commercial spam occurred in 1994 when two lawyers began blasting a post on the Usenet to every news group possible to advertise immigration services. Spam posts and emails increased through the late 1990s at an alarming rate, ultimately causing the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other organizations to begin hearings on the matter.
In the 2000s there were four technology and Internet developments that stand out in relation to email: the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, the launch of Gmail, the rise of social media, and the introduction of the smartphone.
CAN-SPAM Act of 2003
The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, signed into law by President George W. Bush on December 16, 2003, is the first national standard for regulating how and when marketers can send commercial emails in the United States. Although the name CAN-SPAM may sound like it refers to the act of canning SPAM, it is actually an acronym for an FCC rules bill sponsored in Congress by Senators Conrad Burns and Ron Wyden called Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003. The Act establishes the basic rules for sending emails and, more importantly, gives email recipients the right to stop businesses from emailing them. In fact, the CAN-SPAM Act outlines several penalties that can be incurred for violations (though many businesses and recipients remain largely unaware of the rules or penalties).
The actual CAN-SPAM Act makes for difficult reading but fortunately the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and others have tried to provide “plain language” explanations for businesses (e.g., www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business) and consumers (e.g., www.onguardonline.gov/articles/0038-spam). The main requirements for businesses sending emails are as follows:
1. Do not use false or misleading header information.
2. Do not use deceptive subject lines.
3. Identify the message as an ad.
4. Tell recipients where you are located.
5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you.
6. Honor opt-out requests promptly.
7. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf.
What is interesting about these rules is that nowhere does it say a company needs permission to send you a spam email. The key factor is that the email itself has to be clear in what it purports to be or do. Moreover, violation of these rules needs to be reported by the receiver, many of whom are largely unaware of the rules.
Gmail
In 2004, Google launched Gmail on a small scale as an invitation only service. In 2007, Gmail became available to the general public for free. The features that set Gmail apart immediately from its competitors such as Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, were a larger storage capacity for users (1 GB compared to 2 to 4 MB) and a search-oriented, conversation view similar to an Internet forum. Paul Buchheit, the creator of Gmail (and Google’s 23rd employee), started the program by building a search engine for his own mail. This search feature became so popular among Google’s other employees that Buchheit was asked to create a search engine for everyone’s email. Although in today’s computer environments, these may seem like small advantages, it must be remembered that, prior to Gmail, storage space was a constant concern and email was not searchable.
Since its inception, Google has continued to innovate the Gmail product, adding threaded conversations, stars and priorities, syncing with calendar, and other software products. One innovation that no longer exists was called Mail Goggles. Yes, it was an allusion to the more familiar notion of “beer goggles.” When enabled, Gmail would not allow the user to send an email without first taking a math quiz to make sure the user was in the right “state of mind” to be sending email. Of course, the default time setting for Mail Goggles was late nights on weekends. Sadly, this feature is no longer available.
In the summer of 2012, Gmail surpassed Hotmail in users for the first time to become the largest email service provider in the world, boasting approximately 425 million monthly active users. Today Google competes with Microsoft as an enterprise solution for email and other office software for small to large businesses.
The Rise of Social Media
Social networking started long before the 2000s with BBS and AOL. However, in the late 1990s two of the first social networking sites on the World Wide Web emerged, Classmates.com and SixDegrees.com. Classmates was about finding friends from a person’s high school days, while SixDegrees was based on the concept of six degrees of separation, which holds that any one person is connected to any other person by six or fewer relations. A popular implementation involving movie and television star Kevin Bacon (https://oracleofbacon.org) computes the fewest number of movie links required (i.e., the “Bacon number”) to connect Kevin Bacon to any given actor or actress. Neither of these early social networks was able to sustain themselves (though Kevin Bacon resurrected the namesake as a nonprofit in 2007 in the form of SixDegrees.org: www.sixdegrees.org), but the idea of what they provided lives on in the next wave of social media. In 2002, Friendster.com built on the SixDegrees concept of inviting your friends to connect. In 2003, LinkedIn extended the classmates concept of linking people by a shared experience, but making it a professional network by connecting people through work affiliations. These launches were quickly followed by MySpace in 2003, Facebook in 2004, Twitter in 2006, and now many others.
Social media networks make connecting with people from afar easier and more organized as well as making it easier to share rich media. As people turned to social media to connect with each other, businesses followed them by launching their own brand pages in Facebook or establishing Twitter accounts to broadcast their latest deals and product launches. As a result, much like the conversations around the death of the postal service in the late 1990s (and even today), the conversation in the 2000s began to shift to whether social media would be the death of email.
The Introduction of the Smartphone and Mobile
The evolution of smartphones in the early 2000s facilitated a major shift in the way people used email and other software to communicate. Smartphones in the 1990s (e.g., IBM Simon or the Nokia 9000 Communicator) were bulky devices with limited memory and capabilities—though widely popular because they offered something more than the standard mobile phone. In the early 2000s, smartphones began to combine the functionality of a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) with a mobile phone in a smaller frame. The screens were monochrome and allowed for simple, installable software. However, most of the activity was still text-based.
The launch of the Blackberry changed the way professionals did business. The device had a full QWERTY keyboard and made responding to email and other quick messages on the go more viable than before. The market was abruptly changed again in 2007 with the launch of the first iPhone by Apple, Inc. It introduced the first touch screen, provided an Internet experience that mirrored a user’s experience on the computer, and created the “there’s an app for that” mentality. The introduction of the iPhone was significant for both email and social media because it allowed people to have access to these activities around the clock. Instead of being tethered to a computer, people were free to roam and still stay connected to the digital world. As a result, we have seen an increase in email open rates on mobile phones relative to desktop open rates. Mobile marketing is on the rise, while traditional marketing struggles to hold a place in consumers’ lives. Today, email marketers must not only consider the message they want to deliver but also the environment in which the recipient consumes it. This is a topic we will address in more detail later in the book.
As you can see, while email has a long history (see Figure 2.5), the process and technology of email has not changed significantly since its inception. However, the sheer volume of emails we engage with, the advancement of computers and the ability to use rich media, along with the competing noise of other technologies (e.g., social media, smartphones) has changed how we interact with email.
Figure 2.5 Milestones in the development of computers, the Internet, and email.
Exercise: Where Were You When You First Emailed?
Thought exercise: Read the questions below and jot down some notes.
Think back to your first experience with email. How old were you? Who did you email and why? What did you use to send your email? Where were you in the timeline discussed in this chapter? Now fast forward to today. How often do you use email? How many emails do you get in a day? How important is email to your daily routine?
Crocker, D. (March 20, 2012).A history of e-mail: Collaboration, innovation and the birth of a system. Washington, DC: Washington Post.
Internet Society (July, 2014).The History of Spam: The Timeline of events and notable occurrences in the advance of spam. Geneva, Switzerland.
Left, S. (March 13, 2002).Email timeline. London: The Guardian.
Madrigal, A.C. (December, 2014). The fall of Facebook: The social network’s future dominance is far from assured. Washington, DC: The Atlantic.
Partridge, C. (2008). “The technical development of internet email,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 30, no. 2, pp. 3–29.
Walden, D. and Van Vleck, T. (2011).The Compatible Time Sharing System (1961–1973): Fiftieth Anniversary Commemorative Overview, Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society.
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1 A protocol is an official procedure or a standard method to complete a task that is accepted by everyone.