What Your Email Domain Says About You

Maybe you’ve been a Gmail user from the moment the very first invites for accounts went out or maybe you’re still hanging on to your old AOL email address. Either way, your email domain reveals something about you—and the folks from Hunch can explain exactly what that something is.

Spoiler alert: if you lean towards visual images, check out the interactive version of this report.  For details and graphs and context, though, keep reading!

I generally keep the volume on my work computer on mute, only turning it on when my career calls for it… However, sometimes I forget to turn the volume down again, and this has, on occasion, led to the embarrassment of “You’ve got mail!” being shouted by my computer at the entire office.

That’s right; I still use AOL as my personal email provider. I know. I can feel you looking at me with pity, thinking, “Oh my God, what century does this guy come from?” (The same one as Buster Keaton.)

-Sam Barry, “The Daily Sam Confessional: I Still Use AOL”

Admit it. You stereotype people by their email addresses. See a 69 at the end, and you’re guaranteed to roll your eyes. (Well, unless you’re 14.) Purposely misspelled words are perceived as juvenile. A series of numbers or an homage to a favourite band can be either hard to remember or something the email user will never live down.

Career advice books and websites encourage job seekers to use not only their own names in an email address, but to choose domains wisely. Unless you have a custom domain connected to an elite alma mater or a professional website that hiring managers will find irresistible, Gmail is preferred.

But job hunting with an AOL address? Leave that back in 1998.

Even if you’re not job hunting, I only slightly kid when I say that people are suspicious of address ending in @aol.com. Frequent spam from Hotmail and Yahoo! accounts doesn’t boost credibility with these domains, either.

The majority of Hunchers use Gmail, followed by “Other.” In this case, “Other” could refer to those custom domains we previously mentioned, specific company or university domains, or less mainstream domains, like Comcast or NetZero. There are a few steadfast AOL users, though. For their sake, let’s hope they’re not exploring Hunch on a screeching dial-up connection.

So what would you guess about these aberrant AOL users? Would you assume they’re old-school, because they’re, well, older? You’d be right.

But let’s not forget Yahoo! and Hotmail, the other elders of the free email market. People are still loyal to these services, and they’re obviously not total Luddites. In fact, there are nearly 24,000 Facebook users who are proud fans of AOL Mail. (Yahoo! Mail significantly lags with only a little over 5,000 fans. Hotmail’s most devoted Facebook fans  – 42,202 of them – all seem to speak French.)

But Hunchers who don’t use Gmail aren’t gadget-loving early adopters, either. They’re more likely than Gmail users to resent having to keep up with innovation.

Non-Gmail users subscribe to the belief that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” especially if the new fix is cost-prohibitive.

Gmail’s free, but it still has room to prove itself. I mean, it doesn’t know how to prepare breakfast for its users yet. And when will it be able to read minds and write emails for us? Get on it, Google.

With an abundance of older people using AOL and the like, we wondered if the Hunch users we consider outdated were actually the original early adopters of email. Perhaps the idea of transferring thousands of emails and contacts to Gmail scares them from making the switch. Or maybe they’re just nostalgic about keeping their first email accounts.

It looks like might be the case for AOL users, but notice that Gmail users weren’t born – or logged-in – yesterday. They’re most likely to have started using email before 1996. (Remember: As indispensable as it is for most of us now, Gmail wasn’t widely available until 2007).

Alas, we don’t know if these non-Gmail users are using the same accounts as they did in the olden days.

Look where the least-experienced email users are setting up accounts. They’re mostly on Hotmail and Yahoo! What gives?

We’re guessing younger people aren’t necessarily committed to maintaining an email account. They might even start accounts just so they can use other sites, like Facebook. Research has also shown a large demographic split in email usage. It appears younger people prefer the instant contact of texting, IM, and social networking over email. Hotmail seems to recognise this high churn and has made its accounts more disposable – they become inactive after 270 days without access and permanently deleted after 360 days.

Of course, some people maintain multiple email accounts to keep their main in-box from being cluttered. Hotmail, Yahoo!, and AOL accounts might be used as “fun” accounts for personal endeavours, online dating,  or Internet mischief. Or they might just be a sort of email slush pile.

This Oatmeal infographic may not have used an algorithm to deduce correlations between email domains and a users’ computer skills, but it seems right on. What else does Hunch know about email users by domain?

SNAPSHOT OF FINDINGS

• AOL users are most likely to be overweight women ages 35-64 who have a high school diploma and are spiritual, but not religious. They tend to be politically middle of the road, in a relationship of 10+ years, and have children. AOL users live in the suburbs and haven’t traveled outside their own country. Family is their first priority. AOL users mostly read magazines, have a desktop computer, listen to the radio, and watch TV on 1-3 DVRs in their home. At home, they lounge around in sweats. AOL users are optimistic extroverts who prefer sweet snacks and like working on a team.
• Gmail users are most likely to be thin young men ages 18-34 who are college-educated and not religious. Like other young Hunch users, they tend to be politically liberal, single (and ready to mingle), and childless. Gmail users live in cities and have traveled to five or more countries. They’re career-focused and plugged in – they mostly read blogs, have an iPhone and laptop, and listen to music via MP3s and computers (but they don’t have a DVR). At home, they lounge around in a t-shirt and jeans. Gmail users prefer salty snacks and are introverted and entrepreneurial. They are optimistic or pessimistic, depending on the situation.
• Hotmail users are most likely to be young women of average build ages 18-34 (and younger) who have a high school diploma and are not religious. They tend to be politically middle of the road, single, and childless. Hotmail users live in the suburbs, perhaps still with their parents, and have traveled to up to five countries. They mostly read magazines and contemporary fiction, have a laptop, and listen to music via MP3s and computers (but they don’t have a DVR). At home, Hotmail users lounge around in a t-shirt and jeans. They’re introverts who prefer sweet snacks and like working on a team. They consider themselves more pessimistic, but sometimes it depends on the situation.
• Yahoo! users are most likely to be overweight women ages 18-49 who have a high school diploma and are spiritual, but not religious. They tend to be politically middle of the road, in a relationship of 1-5 years, and have children. Yahoo! users live in the suburbs or in rural areas and haven’t traveled outside their own country. Family is their first priority. They mostly read magazines, are almost equally likely to have a laptop or desktop computer, listen to the radio and cds, and watch TV on 1-2 DVRs in their home. At home, Yahoo! users lounge around in pajamas. They’re extroverts who prefer sweet snacks and like working on a team. Yahoo! users are optimistic or pessimistic, depending on the situation.
• Republished with permission from the Hunch Blog. You can check out its new roll-over graphics for the pretty picture version of all this. Ooh! Ahh!

  And if this report has you thinking you need another email address, Hunch can recommend online email services. If AOL comes up in your top three, please don’t take offence.