Thought: Trends of mass opening of accounts for 5 types of online services
With more and more new online services popping up, I am getting at least 10-12 new site sign-up requests every week. I regularly wonder if many people simply open such online accounts and visit them regularly, or if they keep on opening new accounts and never visit them on a regular basis after that. Such a trend has me thinking: the online world has seen such mass hysteria of opening new accounts for different services before.
Listed below are trends of 5 different types of online services that have drawn a huge crowd after them. I have listed each trend in the order it became popular, going from the oldest and longest running trend, opening e-mail accounts, to the youngest and most famous trend today, opening social networking accounts.
5 different trends of opening 5 different types of online accounts
- E-mail
I remember an era during the 90’s when signing up for dozens of e-mail accounts was cool. Having so many e-mail accounts did nothing; sending an e-mail was still sending an e-mail. People back then had Hotmail [now called Windows Live Mail], Coldmail, Yahoo Mail, Mail.com, ICQ mail, and AOL mail. Now, people also have Gmail, self-hosted e-mails on personal domains, and more. Having more e-mail accounts was once considered a status. Now, even though many people do not realize that each existing and additional e-mail account can bring in its own unique benefits and downsides, more and more people still keep opening new e-mail accounts daily.
Opening e-mail accounts is one of the longest lasting online trends ever, and e-mails are still one of the most widely used online tools, if not the most widely used online tool.
- Guestbooks
This trend also started more solidly in the 90’s, and continued all the way until the first year or so after 2000 under the original name “guestbook“, after which the name continued and continues to lose its popularity to other terms and concepts which have been derived from it. The term guestbook came from the actual guestbooks and the same term used to describe books at places like museums, where visitors could leave comments and remarks for others to see, whether anonymously or with any detail. Online, in many cases, the guestbook became more popular than e-mail during its strong day, not in number of users but in actual fame, among many people who had guestbooks like Bravenet Guestbooks.
Guestbooks paved the way for public comments that we see on blogs today. Overall, Guestbooks are still around in their pure form and in some evolved forms like online blog comments. Original, pure guestbooks themselves have lost a lot of their original popularity. In many cases, guestbooks have lost popularity and ground to the very concepts that were derived from them, like comments and forums.
- Online diaries, blogs and their variants
Online diaries were the sites that brought blogs into existence. Technically, blogs are nothing more than diaries. Of course, the concept of blogging has been commercialized and now online diaries, the very sites that started it all, are considered immature and not worthy by many of the blogs that aim to make money through non-personal content. I know many people who had and have different online diaries for different reasons. Many people would simply abandon one online diary for the other, as the concept of deleting online accounts was not considered as important by many people in the mid-90’s.
Among the other things that online diaries have evolved into, blogs are the new normal craze now. Many people get more excited about having a blog instead of getting excited of what they want to achieve and what they can achieve with a blog. Online diaries have evolved into many things including blogs, networking sites, and more. LiveJournal can probably be considered an evolved example of personal diaries.
Blogs are thriving, and are continuing to get stronger everyday. According to Technorati, more than 70 millions online blogs existed as of April 2007.
- Chat and instant messaging accounts
Instant messaging started mainly during the 2nd half of the 90’s, and to this day is very popular. Instant messaging accounts allow people to instantly chat with someone online. In the 90’s, people used to lure their friends into using ICQ to keep in touch. Slowly, Yahoo Messenger, AIM and MSN Messenger [now called Windows Live Messenger] brought more popularity to the entire instant messaging arena.
Instant messaging itself got popular because of Internet Relay Chat [IRC]. IRC allowed people to chat instantly and live, and thus allowed them to communicate a bit faster than e-mail, if the people involved were online and using an IRC program at the same time. IRC evolved into different kinds of instant messaging, and instant messaging itself evolved and divided into voice chats, webcam conferences, live chat via e-mail accounts such as in Gmail, and more. In some ways, IRC itself can be considered an evolution of e-mail.
Instant messaging accounts and online chats are also thriving and getting more popular everyday. At this moment, for the first time in internet history, a growing number of online people are using instant messaging more than e-mail.
- Networking sites, which include social networking sites
The latest, youngest and biggest craze right now is to open a social networking account. MySpace, twitter, facebook, linkedin, Bebo and many other networking and social networking sites came out with a big bang at different times during the last 5 years. As of last week, MySpace had over 200 million accounts. If it is assumed that each of those 200 millions accounts is owned by a unique individual, 200 millions MySpace members are almost 1/3rd the size of the entire U.S. population. Many people have multiple accounts on different networking sites, and many people simply delete their online networking accounts so that they can start afresh with new accounts.
Networking sites are very strong right now, attracting more and more members everyday. At the same time, networking sites are also in their infancy sage. Social networking sites are the least experienced players in the entire online arena compared to the other 4 types [e-mail, guest books, online diaries and instant messaging accounts]. In many ways, networking sites can be considered children of concepts like Yahoo Groups and the original Usenet groups, now part of Google groups.
The trend of opening networking sites in huge numbers started recently, and is in full force right now, gaining more momentum. It is happening and evolving live as you read this.
There you have it. Listed above are 5 trends of opening up 5 different kinds of accounts. These 5 services have had a historical trend of attracting a crowd that focused hysterically on opening new accounts. E-mail is the oldest and longest running of such trends, and networking sites are the youngest of the bunch.
Can you think of any trend from the above or any other trend you yourself may have been, or are, involved in? Do you have any questions or comments? Please let me know.
Thanks for reading. 
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( September 12th, 2007 at 1:26 pm )
Nice :)! I had thought about that a few times but I never wrote a post about it and its good that you did :P. I’ve been finding myself opening numerous accounts and forgetting my password lol.. (ie: yahoo, hotmail etc) and when I need it, I have to re-register. Now, I write down all the accounts I’ve opened lol..
Its funny because when I thought I needed it, I created an account, and later I either abandon it or I need it again but I forget the password. This can range from (Friendster, Hi5, to MSN, ICQ and AOL)
After awhile of inactivity, I usually delete it so that spies cannot view my personal information X)..
I was thinking why I needed all those accounts, I guess its because it was ‘hit’ then like you said…or perhaps more people that I knew used those accounts.. so in order to stay in touch, I had to have one of those accounts.. heh…
how about you?
( September 12th, 2007 at 7:50 pm )
Thanks Vera, for the nice comment.
You should write a post too with your own take on it also, as that would be fun and interesting to read!
I also try numerous accounts from time to time, and I also try to delete them if I do not use them. I have forgotten several passwords also, I think. I also do not like any of my information out there that I am not aware of, or that I am not able to control even a little bit. I also was in those “hit” sessions; I signed up with Ringo, for example, to view other friend’s profile. Now, it is almost impossible to delete Ringo account or get my lost password and log into it. Such a bad interaction and usability interface, even though the front end looks normal in some ways.
If I am not using some service, or find some other replacement, I try to delete the account right away. Today, I e-mailed bloggers choice awards and tumblr.com to ask them how to delete my account [as their websites do not list a function], and they both responded back quickly and deleted my accounts too. I like that; less accounts, I feel better, and I have good views of those companies as they were nice and actually wrote down a response even when I was letting them go.
Still, some places it is so hard to even get a forgotten password. For example, I signed up with Zooomr long time ago, and cannot find my password. Without password, I cannot delete my account. It is almost hard to find a good way to contact Zooomr, and it is also hard to get a reply from them.
I have to make a list of all online accounts I have, for all services. Have you made such a list, or do you think such a list can help keep a track of accounts we have?
( September 14th, 2007 at 9:51 pm )
So… what are you saying?
( October 30th, 2007 at 12:53 pm )
There is one greate service called Mebbo. Its instant messenger online website with support many IM client! Iam use it for years. Thats great
( October 31st, 2007 at 1:23 am )
Valerie, good question. I am talking about the history, the trend, how people react, how stereotypes change our perception of many things [like many people forgetting that personal sites, which turned into blogs, changed the face of the internet], how priorities change even when the the outcome almost remains the same, among a few other things.
Meeebo, thanks for the comment. Do you mean the Meebo service? What protocols [yahoo, aim, etc] do you use on it?
( December 10th, 2007 at 8:06 am )
Great article. i prefer Bebo.
( December 27th, 2007 at 10:32 am )
Points 3-5 are indications of the Web 2.0 phenomenon, while points 1-2 are precursors to it as you identified. These are just the beginning steps to how internet technology is becoming an accepted way of social interaction among humans. Out of this, more and more different ways of interacting will become available. Obviously no one can be truly active on all sites, but rather, like myself, try out what seems interesting and stick to the few that manage to maintain that interest. With that, managing sites are emerging where you can manage accounts from all of these different sites. Anyways, this is my first time viewing your blog, and I must tip my hat off to ya - great work, great ideas, great posts, great vibe - keep it coming!
( April 21st, 2008 at 10:58 pm )
[Sorry for the late comments. I am just almost getting back to replying to everyone. Thanks for waiting so far.]
Paul from Bebo, thanks for coming to the site and sharing.
Are there some aspects of Bebo that you prefer over other services? Did you have any accounts at other places before and you closed them?
ecommercedude, thanks for sharing too. You are right: upgrades will keep on happening, specially in areas where there is a commercial possibility. Regarding managing sites, that is a new trend also, with managing programs like Pidgin also coming into play. I use pidgin myself regularly and have recently been testing Digsby. Both of these downloadable programs allow you to log into multiple messengers and social networks [digsby only for social networks] from one single program.
Thank you so much for coming and for the kinds words; they are very encouraging and I am glad I am doing something that you think is good. I hope you come back again soon and see if anything else here attracts your attention too.
( July 2nd, 2008 at 1:38 am )
Have to agree with you. And I also think that YouTube should also be considered a networking site and be added to number 5 too. They are becoming much more then just a video sharing and viewing site but rather more community like now. There are some videos with over thousands of comments and discussions.
( August 15th, 2008 at 12:41 am )
great article, congrats mate