History of Email Directories
Search For An Email Address
See Who Owns An Email
When you are going to try to find someone's phone number, you know that you've got the phone book. When you're going to try to find someone's email address, however, where do you turn? These days you can turn to an online directory. These directories have become the easiest way to uncover a friend, relative, or business associate's email address especially if you know how to use one properly. But how did they start, and why did they begin?
The BeginningIn the beginning, there were no email address directories. In order to access someone's electronic mail address, you had to go the long way and ask them directly or contact people that knew the same person. This, however, became extremely annoying. It was then that email providers decided that to start their own directory.
This great idea, however, didn't work, as there are a number of different email providers, including those that are internet providers and those that are solely email providers. This meant that if you were looking for a person's address but didn't know what provider they used, you would have to search every provider and hope that you got lucky.
Another problem was that many people chose to opt their personal information out of these directories. The advent of the internet and the new ease with which to share information caused many people to worry about their safety which lead them to keep their contact information private. This made it virtually impossible to get in touch with someone via electronic correspondence unless you knew their exact address.
A New Kind Of DirectoryEventually, someone developed the bright idea of taking all of the individual directories and merging them into one central location for easy accessibility. This type of service successfully retrieved databases from different email services, some which volunteered the information and others that they had to buy. This type of directory was set up so that people could conduct comprehensive searches for the email address they were looking for. The search feature of the directory would crawl through all of the different directories to look for the information. Unfortunately it was a very small list and wasn't a big help to many.
Once the technology advanced further, email address retrieval became a lot easier. Now you can find almost any address you'd like using an email directory, unless, of course, a person has opted out of having their name included. The technology is faster and better, and can do things that the search engines of yesteryear could only dream about.