What is Email? – Definition, Functions, Types and More

Definition Email

Email (Electronic mail) is a mode of exchanging messages among people through electronic devices. Invented by Ray Tomlinson in 1960, it became trendy by the mid of 1970.

You can send and receive messages to multiple recipients or recipients, located anywhere in the world. In addition to a written text, you can include files such as documents, images, music, video files, etc. The ease of use, speed, and low cost of the transmission of information have meant that most institutions and individuals have [email] as the primary means of communication. In this way, it was possible to move the traditional correspondence, telephone, and fax from the first place of communication media.

Origin of Email

The email has a reasonably old data. Although everything was handled by manual mail, with the use of technology, the need began to communicate faster without generating too much expense. In 1965 the figure of the Mail was created through that same computer. The first message sent as an email (from one computer to another) was in 1971, thanks to the ARPANET network. Later, Ray Tomlinson changed the vision of the mail.

Ray was a programmer who not only managed to send the first mail in the world but also incorporated the @ as a method to separate the user’s computer, in addition to identifying the mail company to which the user was registered. Then, in 1977, emails became standardized. So, in 1962, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began sending messages through a computer, having the ability to save each file on its hard drive.

Functions of an Email

It is necessary to mention the protocols of use of the same, for example, there is the SMTP protocol, its acronym in English means Simple Mail Transfer Protocol which allows transmitting the message from the outgoing server to the receiver. POP protocol whose acronym in English means Post Office Protocol.

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How to create an Email account

Creating an email is not complicated, but you have to be quite clear that there are different email platforms. It is always good to have an account in each one because people can vary between one platform and another; it all depends on its operation, agility, benefits, and quality. To create an email, you have to go to the most desired email page; it can be Gmail email or Outlook email. At the top right of the page, two options will appear Login, Register. The second option must be selected.

After completing the first step, the page creates a redirection to a form where the account gets created, specifying the username and password. With the user, it is necessary to verify that no other person has the same, so it must be as original as possible. For the password, the use of uppercase, lowercase, punctuation, different characters, and even numbers is necessary.

This step is better known as my email; it is the profile, the user’s full name, year of birth, age, home country or his current location, zip code, and add a photo to the profile. After this, they collect the contacts that they want to add for sending emails, although it is not essential to keep them added to the platforms.

The most popular Emails

Although there are different email platforms, users will always prefer one over the other; this is due to the quality they offer, the ease of use, and the experience they have.

Gmail

Gmail is one of the most prominent emails worldwide for many years. It is the mail provider par excellence and has at least one billion users on the web.

Outlook

Outlook formerly known as Hotmail Email is one of Microsoft’s tools. It has advanced storage options, and the option to recover those emails gets deleted by mistake.

Yahoo

Yahoo is another important email platform, although it is also a web search tool. In this platform you can delete unusable messages after 90 days, it has 350 million users.

AOI

AOI is also one of the most popular email platforms on the network; it has unlimited storage capacity, known since 1980 under the name of América Online. Verizon bought it in 2015 (along with Yahoo, by the way) to optimize its operations and turn them into two compelling email platforms.

iCloud

iCloud is a unique platform for Apple devices. This company has a series of quite rigorous security policies, and not anyone can access this platform, as it is essential to have a machine from this company.

iCloud is one of the few platforms that have automatic responses to emails or messages sent through it.

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