Yahoo Mail Opens up Two New Domains

If your favorite name @yahoo.com was snagged back in 1997, now is your chance to get in on @ymail.com and @rocketmail.com while they're still new.

Popularity may be a boon for a free e-mail service’s creators, but for new users, joining a giant e-mail service usually entails tacking a bunch of numbers onto the end of a name just to find a handle that no one else has taken. Yahoo recently recognized this problem in its own Yahoo Mail service, and launched the solution on Thursday: two fresh e-mail domains to open up those commonly used names again.

Users signing up for Yahoo Mail can now choose from addresses that end in @ymail.com or @rocketmail.com, giving the John Thompsons, Mary Smiths and Steve Richards of the world a chance to nab their commonly held monikers before someone else does.

A recent survey commissioned by Yahoo revealed just how important the actual names used in e-mail addresses are to users. Fifty-nine percent of respondents prioritized an address that was easy to remember – an attribute that’s hard to come by when you’ve got five random digits hanging off the end. The best choice for an easy-to-remember name was contentious though: given a choice of any e-mail address, there was a close three-way split over whether users would opt for their last names, first names, or nicknames (last names ended up winning by a hair.)

The most desirable names on the new domains have actually been reserved by Yahoo, but for good reason. It will auction them off on eBay, with benefits going to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Ocean Conservancy, Point Foundation, Right To Play and World Wildlife Fund.