I bought a gmail invite from a message board. If this sequence of words makes sense to you, you’re old too.
I got an invite to Gmail when I was in university. Sadly I was at inbox zero for quite some time so I don’t have the Welcome to Gmail email anymore. It’s more than likely my oldest active account. I do have a Neowin account that still works from 2002 but I don’t frequent anymore. Macrumors is my most active old forum account, that’s from 2005. I had an ancient AIM and ICQ account but there’s no way I could remember the account details.
Ditto for the AIM and ICQ.
I think I read recently that ICQ was shutting down.
I still remember when AIM shutdown for good. That was a sad day.
I mean you could always make a new account to get the welcome email and photoshop the dates and times to make it look like it’s older. I imagine the look of the email now is different from 2003, tho.
TIL G-Mail was invite only back then. I am too GenZ to undersand this shit.
A pattern they repeated with Google Wave and Google+, neither of which took off, partly because there weren’t enough people using them.
I genuinely thought G+ could have been a FB killer, if they hadn’t made it hard to join.
Mine was from a chain of random people posting their invite links on Slashdot. It feels like ancient history now.
I still have a Slashdot account from 2009. Haven’t been on there much in years though. Google would probably be my oldest actively used account as I still use the one I set up with the initital invite.
:-(
Shiiit, actually that does make sense. I remember when Gmail gave you 10 invites for new accounts and you didn’t even get them right away. You had to earn them over time. So yeah, invites were regularly sold on the message boards I used to frequent.
My Hotmail account, which I’ve had since high school. Oldest email in there is from 2002, but I think I opened it up in 2000.
same, but yahoo.
Same, but my original Hotmail account is long lost. I still have the one I made around 2000 though.
RIP suckitdown@hotmail
Same. I use mine to log into things that require an email so they can spam you.
Usenet account from 1987. And no, I’m not going to post what it is.
What’s “on” there? What can it be compared to at this time?
Usenet was the golden age of Reddit for its time. Before the binary newsgroups drowned everything out and web 1.0 captured everyone’s attention.
In a way, it was a lot like Lemmy. Federated servers all inter-exchanged posts to a giant, global message board of newsgroups (roughly analogous to a subreddit or Lemmy community). Anyone could create a newsgroup and there were a lot of them.
When it was good, it fostered the same kind of genuine conversation that Reddit and Lemmy do when they’re at their best. It was full of memes, too, although that word didn’t exist then.
I haven’t actually used that account other than to verify it is still there on my old university’s servers, in almost 20 years. I probably should try it out again.
Usenet? Most new media can be found there. The most copyright-contentious files are not on there for long so most folks use automated downloaders.
X-No-Archive: yes
Probably my 2004 Gmail account, but that’s pushing the definition of “still use somewhat frequently”. I do still have my email forwarded to my current address, but most senders have been updated with my current address.
I lost control of my Hotmail, AIM, ICQ accounts years ago.
I still have my ICQ. That’s one number burned into my brain.
Didn’t ICQ recently shut the service down? Thought I saw a headline along those lines recently.
Did they? I only log in like every six months or so. :(
Edit: yep. June 24, 2024. RIP 8833052
Oh… RIP 170538332 (I forgot the password for my first one and had to create a second one, and for some reason that’s the number that stuck with me)
Somehow I can never seem to forget my ICQ number. 28493804. I have no idea why that’s always in my brain, but it is.
Uh-oh! Mine was long forgotten.
deleted by creator
I think my AIM account is still technically active even though they shut it down. Don’t know what they did with all the accounts.
I’ve had my Hotmail amount for like 25 years
How much is too much Hotmail?
Same. Got in early, and it’s just my first and last name. I use it now as a bin for accounts for websites i dont want in my main inbox.
I also have an aol email address from around the same time that im scared to open.
Who knows what’s in there.
Hotmail was one of my very first email accounts but I believe Microshaft had already bought it by the time I signed up. I think I was about 12 or 13.
I joined a forum about 30 years ago, and I am still a regular. I can’t say the exact date I joined, nor can the forum admins, as things like that were not tracked back then. Even them having my email was a way later add-on.
I’ve got a 20 year old Gmail account that I use when I need to sign up for something.
A four letter .com domain name I registered in 2003. Supposedly worth $5000-6000 presently.
Or my eBay account I’ve had since 2001.
(Don’t click that)
Pretty sure that’d be worth much, much more than mine :)
A hotmail account from before microsoft bought it
Yep. Same. I can’t think of anything older that is still operating.
My hotmail account.
Signed up for it in the closed beta way before Microsoft bought it, was fucking pissed when they did.
It’s my 2fa for most of my games and the emergency email for my other emails.
Nice try, Narc
I have a Yahoo email account from the mid-late 90’s…
Same. It would have been 1997 or later.
Mine’s about the same age, 97 or 98. Log into it very infrequently but it still works.
Everything else I recall having an account on from the late 90s no longer exists.
Nothing really, I try to switch account and delete old ones every now and again. My oldest account is my bank account.
Hotmail. 1997.
ebay. 1998
