'Domain shame' afflicts some e-mailers
Toolbox
By DON FERNANDEZ Cox News Service - Published: May 1, 2005
Think of Nikki Maples' e-mail inbox as a chichi nightclub. With a very tight velvet rope.
Hotmail? Coldly snubbed. Yahoo? A dilettante's cry. AOL? "Goodbye."
You want to get inside? Better dress up that address.
"I think that domain names really tell you a lot about a person," says Maples. "The Gmail domain, for example, lets me know someone spends a lot of time online. Hotmail means it's free, and I always use caution communicating. I give the most respect to the cable provider domains — Charter, Comcast."
Introducing the newest digital affliction: domain shame.
The inferences and stereotypes once implied by a person's e-mail name — pimpman404 or spoiledbrat770 speak for themselves — are now being passed on to the domains they use for correspondence. Addresses originating from such popular services as Hotmail, Yahoo and America Online are often painting a picture of the user.
"When I see a Yahoo or Hotmail domain I think not only cheap, but also disposable and possibly porno, because of the anonymity of those domains," says Elizabeth McDaniel. "And I think 'dumbo' when I see someone nowadays with an AOL account."
Some employers are now balking at resumes that are sent from certain e-mail domains because of the stigma attached.
"I'll never hire someone with an aol.com address," says Peter Shankman, founder of The Geek Factory, a New York City marketing firm that consults for such clients as Yoo-hoo soft drinks and Walt Disney World. "It screams that you're at a very basic stage."
And mighty AOL — which 50 million Americans still rely upon for e-mail exchanges, according to an Internet audience measurement service — is far from threatened.
"The thing that is most disconcerting to our members is not the domain names, but what is being sent," says AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham. "There's an immense amount of integrity and trust associated with the aol.com name."
The online giant, however, is fully aware of domain stigma: It offers software that allows its members to block specific domain names from their inboxes.
But before the domain elitists cop an attitude, they may want to realize that there's also a backlash against their bluster.
Personalized domains, which perhaps offer the greatest air of authenticity to an e-mail recipient, also can elicit the greatest contempt.
Yourname@yourname.com can intimate to some that you're a jerk.
"When I see someone like that it's like, 'Whoa, that person's a little full of themselves,'" says David Carnoy, executive editor at technology news Web site CNET.com in New York City.
"It's almost like a vanity license plate."
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