you@ireland.com is Back

Image by bowbrick via Flickr

you@ireland.com may be back, but is the lure worth the hassle?

When the Irish Times launched its website irish-times.ie in 1994, it was the first to do so in Britain and Ireland and one of only 30 newspapers world wide to do so. When it moved its content and the online edition of the paper to the fantastic domain name “ireland.com”, it did so with an air of grace that one has come to expect from the Paper of Record.

What was novel in those early days of the internet in Ireland, was the integration of an online email system. Sure we all had our hotmail or yahoo addresses – gmail wasnt even a zygote at this stage remember – and to be fair both hotmail and yahoo were the number one players when it came to search engines and content providers. However the lure of having an @ireland.com email address was quite strong. It was something you could drop into conversations. Something which could be and was used by many many people as a way of bringing through their Irish connection, while also getting the content from the Irish Times daily in their email (again RSS feeds were not necessarily as big as they are now).

Given the popularity of the domain name and the further expansion the interweb, the Irish Times  took the decision in 2002 to reclaim the content and the domain name and make the vast majority of it a premium service. I for one was very sad. As a secondary school student I was not in a position to pay the “extortionist” rate of €19 per annum for the use of my beloved @ireland.com email address. (two points here, 1. I am showing my age and 2. Yes, €19 seems like nothing right now. Still I don’t know if I would want to add it to my other list of  everyday bills – phone bill, broadband, credit cards, tax, insurance, gas bills, public transport etc. ).  Whilst I loved reading my Irish Times online, I moved back to reading it in hardcopy, and for the meager price of .70c (well it was in college like and at .70c who could refuse the Paper of Record!).

The decision to suspend the premium content subscribtion earlier this year was of course met with overjoy by many IT readers. Not since the departure of certain journalists has such joy been felt. If the Internet is about the free movement of Information and content as well as engaging and informing the populous, then it follows that the best information should be made free in order to follow that thesis. I have never minded paying for good journalism, once I know it will be good. However, with the likes of the Huffingtonpost.com and various other worldwide media giants weighing in on aggregating media stories on as diverse stories as Obama & McCain’s meeting yesterday to some guys’ dog doing tricks in Oregon, it is  clear that there is alot of competition out there!

SO why am I in a state of nostalgia about the loss of my @ireland.com email address. It’s not like I haven’t moved on. My permanent email is with @gmail.com now and that is what I use for all of my personal correspondence. I like my @gmail.com. However the lure of @ireland.com is back. This morning I recieved an email into my work email advising that @ireland.com  is back and open for business, with no premium charge. It has all the same functions as before .i.e. It sends email However, it hasthe following:

• 5 GB storage;
• Calendar function;
• Document Storage; and
• Tasks Manager.

Will I be swayed back to my @ireland.com email address. Well yes the lure exists and Yes I have registered for a new account. However it will not be my primary email address. Given the sting of 2002 and the hassle with comes of needing to tell everybody that your email address has changed. I will not be relying on it.

The Paper of Record it may be. The Provider of Choice it is not.