a Little blog - Who knew?

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Who knew?

Useless facts that make me feel good.

Here's some Hotmail trivia to impress your friends:

Hotmail is used in more than 220 countries and territories – more than the number recognized by the United Nations.
If MSN Hotmail’s 190M active accounts were citizens of a single country, it would be the world’s 5th largest country.

No. 5, MSN Hotmail, 190mm
No. 6, Brazil 184mm
No. 7, Pakistan, 159mm
No. 8, Russia, 144mm
No. 9, Bangladesh, 141mm

If connected hand-to-hand, the 190 million MSN Hotmail members would circle the Earth at the equator over five and a half times.
MSN Hotmail e-mail service members number more than the combined population of the world’s 20 largest cities.
If all MSN Hotmail members were standing in single file, they would line the length of the Great Wall of China or the Nile River (the longest river in the world) over 17 times.
The MSN Hotmail user base has grown more than 18 times since January 1998, which is more than the world population has grown in the last fifty years.
Since 1997, MSN® Hotmail® has grown nearly 20 times from 10 million to 190 million subscribers.
In 2001 and 2003 MSN Hotmail was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest free Web-based e-mail service provider.

Hotmail | Microsoft

Posted by Reeves February 9, 2005

Disclaimer | Comments [8] Tracked by:
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Thursday, February 10, 2005 8:20:11 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Number of hotmail accounts is NOT the same as the number of hotmail members...

Hassan Voyeau

Thursday, February 10, 2005 9:41:57 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

And I doubt we could get even a fraction of them to stand around the Great Wall for a photo op. :)

Reeves Little

Thursday, February 10, 2005 11:46:06 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

> grown more than 18 times since January 1998, which is more than the world population has grown in the last fifty years.
This is kind of misleading. I doubt the world population has grown 18 times since 1955.

Umesh

Thursday, February 10, 2005 1:48:23 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

You got it exaclty. Hotmail population has grown to 18 times its size while the world poplulation hasn't grown that much in the past 50 years.

Reeves Little

Thursday, February 10, 2005 5:13:55 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Ok - i'm nitpicking here, but I think you should find out when the world population was 1/18th of what it is now are restate that sentence to read something like 'the world population hasn't grown that much in the past 372 years' or something like that. :-)

Umesh

Thursday, February 10, 2005 9:15:39 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Good point. The fine folks who compiled the fun facts used data from the US census bureau, which only goes back to 1950 (and 50 years is a much more even number than 55).

Let's give this a shot: according to the census site (http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/popclockw), the estimated world population at this hot second is:
6,418,042,332

Making 1/18th of that number (roughly):
356,557,907

According to about.com (http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm have a pop-up blocker ready) the population of the world in 1000 and 1500 was (respectively):
275 million and 450 million

So, Hotmail has managed to grow in seven years at a rate which it took the world between 500 and 1000 years to achieve. That does sound more impressive. :)

BTW: I did try to be a good Microsoftie and use Encarta but the data I was able to find there didn't go back quite far enough (http://uk.encarta.msn.com/media_701500260_781529237_-1_1/World_Population_Growth_in_Major_Areas.html).

Reeves Little

Friday, February 11, 2005 1:52:33 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Where did you get this data from?

Alex Barnett

Friday, February 11, 2005 8:18:49 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

The fun facts were prepared by our PR team for press inquiries... I thought they were cool so I snagged them. The population data in the fun facts is from the U.S. Census Bureau, International Database, 2004. The Hotmail data is from the Horse's mouth... so to say. :)