Some good lessons about PR can be learned here. For one, don't use your normal marketing tone/marketing speak in a candid Q/A session like this one. The IE9 AMA and this AMA have done more to make me lose respect for Microsoft than anything else I've seen from them (although, I should note that I'm not old enough to have been around in their true "evil empire" style days). If they would actually answer questions honestly and engage the people asking them rather than spewing out the typical bullshit, I'd have gained more respect for them. They aren't acting like they're talking to people here. I don't mind seeing this kind of tone in press releases and such, but don't pretend you're going to give an honest "Ask Me Anything" style Q/A session when it's just free marketing. I think they're shooting themselves in the foot here, mostly. Until the IE9 AMA, I was considering trying it out, but their tone completely turned me off of it.
Hotmail development team on Reddit
61–70 of 122 posts
Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit
#62I found the much more insulting thing on that thread was the Hotmail developers' insistence that user's emails should be deleted after 270 days of inactivity. This point was brought up many times (well, about the old 30-day or 90-day limits), and all the devs said was "we fixed that! it used to be 30, now it's 270". That is so incredibly insulting. If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could com…
There's internet, even in Africa! If you completely disconnect in this day and age for 9 months you're probably dead.
There's a difference between not using the internet and not using hotmail.
I personally log into Hotmail twice a year, specifically to ensure that my account does not get deleted. I have enough things from my past that may or may not try to send me an email at my @hotmail.com address (or require it to get back in to their service) that it's just to risky to lose it.
Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit
#63I was a Hotmail Fan, until (at 2005-2006) one time, I didn't log for 3 months or so. All my inbox was recycled. I have only 4 Mb of Emails. They are hosting emails, few conversations and accounts information.
It messed me up, as I lost lot of info; I decided not to use it again, even though I was happy with the experience (light Email user). I moved to gmail by begging random users to send me an invite. I was amazed with the storage and also with the experience and I still use the same inbox to that day.
Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit
#64I hope the Hotmail team follows through with answering questions. When the IE team offered to answer questions on Reddit, they quit after a few hours. The questions I had asked was (summarized): Most IE6 usage seems to be from large corps, and much of their resistance to upgrading is due to internal apps which only work correctly on IE6. Why doesn't Microsoft offer a standalone IE6 distro which could be installed alo…
Companies with these locked down Win2K/XP/ie6 desktops wouldn't install that, because that would be work, which costs money. If they saw ie6 as a problem and were willing to put in any effort whatsoever to fix it, they would have done so long ago.
Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's a reasonable amount of time to assume a user has left and isn't coming back? Why should they hold data forever when for whatever reason it looks like you've abandoned it?
1 Year. There are many people who make event specific emails addresses. These events are annual, so they use the email yearly.
I'd make it two years since sometimes things are off by a week or two.
Additionally, they should not delete any existing mail, but instead move all new mail at that point to spam, which I think gets deleted in one month.
This way you never lose anything you actually know about. And you have recent email just sent to you. The cost of this should be very low.
Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's a reasonable amount of time to assume a user has left and isn't coming back? Why should they hold data forever when for whatever reason it looks like you've abandoned it?
1 Year. There are many people who make event specific emails addresses. These events are annual, so they use the email yearly.
1 year is still far too short (and only a touch longer than the current 270 days). 5 years is more reasonable. It costs them so very little to keep the data, and it costs people so dearly to lose emotionally important stuff over a technicality.
Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I basically agree with you, but I'm guessing that the important thing isn't saving disk space, but freeing up usernames.
Not sure about this. Hotmail accounts are like Facebook connect accounts, and I use mine for xbox live, MSN messenger, among other Microsoft services. Yet I haven't used Hotmail in years, and when I did I'd always get the "we deleted everything so now you're fresh again" setup notice.
You don't have to use hotmail for MSN messenger, xbox live, or other services. I signed up for a windows live ID using my gmail email address. You can use yahoo too if thats what you use.
Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit
#68I found the much more insulting thing on that thread was the Hotmail developers' insistence that user's emails should be deleted after 270 days of inactivity. This point was brought up many times (well, about the old 30-day or 90-day limits), and all the devs said was "we fixed that! it used to be 30, now it's 270". That is so incredibly insulting. If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could com…
"If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could come home to find 10 years of email deleted."
That is more insulting.
We have Internet here so you can check your mail.
Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit
#69I found the much more insulting thing on that thread was the Hotmail developers' insistence that user's emails should be deleted after 270 days of inactivity. This point was brought up many times (well, about the old 30-day or 90-day limits), and all the devs said was "we fixed that! it used to be 30, now it's 270". That is so incredibly insulting. If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could com…
This exact thing happened to me in 2005 - I lost 7 years of emails from high school, college, between myself and several girlfriends, chat logs I'd saved from IRC, photos, and other important notes. I was incredibly pissed and immediately stopped using hotmail for anything, including changing all my other accounts everywhere else to not use hotmail as a backup email address. It was unbelievable to me then that they w…
The same thing had happen to me. 2 months passed, lost to the mountains and wild of the hinterlands, I return and Microsoft has burned all of my letters and rented out my room. GMail was an easy choice.
Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit
#70I found the much more insulting thing on that thread was the Hotmail developers' insistence that user's emails should be deleted after 270 days of inactivity. This point was brought up many times (well, about the old 30-day or 90-day limits), and all the devs said was "we fixed that! it used to be 30, now it's 270". That is so incredibly insulting. If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could com…
While everyone is up in arms for Microsoft at deleting the emails after 270 days Google too has a policy which they can terminate your account ofter 9 months (30x9=270) of inactivity. It seems reddit needs to do a little reading up.
http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en-GB/program_policies...
However I'm not clear if they have it automatically delete it after 9 months regardless of the activity or if there are other conditions that factor into this.
The whole deleting emails is a bad experience though. Just another reason to back up important files.