SIGMAIL SWEEPS UNIVERSITY CAMPUS

Womens social club Sigma Alpha adopts an email address with a personalized twist

ABILENE - University social clubs are proud packs. For decades, identifying letters have been ironed onto shirts, monogrammed to hats, knitted into sweaters, hung from necklaces, cast into rings, adhered to cars, printed on stationery, even tattooed onto body parts.
At Hardin-Simmons University, womens social club Sigma Alpha is taking the tradition one step further, attaching its club name to an email address. Through a free email service, Mailspace.com, 47 young women in Sigma Alpha opened email accounts with the domain name SigMail.org, creating a uniform address for their club.
These days, universities issue email accounts as commonly as dorm rooms and meal plans, but addresses are usually long strings of complex characters. Mailspace.com offers witty and proprietary email addresses to suit just about any individual or organization.
Its fun to be the only social club in town to have our name on our email address," said Kristen Horton, an officer last year for Sigma Alpha. Its personalized, and its easy to remember."
Signing up for SigMail also attracted the club to something it had never tried before -- a club electronic address book, making communication among club members faster and easier.
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We send pledging assignments and prayer requests through SigMail, and we use it for announcements that cant wait for a Monday meeting," Horton said. And Ill be using SigMail all summer to stay in touch with my Sigma Alpha sisters."
SigMail has saved the club much time and expense on weekly prayer requests that were once sent via university mail, said Sigma Alpha Chaplain Miriam Wilks. Before SigMail, Wilks collected requests at weekly club meetings to type into her computer, then printed copies and labeled them before dropping them into university mail. Mailspace.com has saved Sigma Alpha about $10 a week in printing costs and Wilks a significant amount of the labor.
Now its much easier; with a click of the mouse I can send prayer requests to everyone at once," Wilks said.
Uncle Sam also discovered an advantageous address through Mailspace.com. A group of resourceful GIs has made GIMail.com one of the hottest domain names at Mailspace.com. These military men, who depend heavily on email within their work force, signed on with Mailspace.com when their government email system was undergoing technical glitches.
    It just makes sense," said Randy Barnett, founder of Mailspace.com. So much of our identity is tied up in what we do and what were interested in - not only our own identity, but also others perceptions of us. In a world where people often lament being 'just another number, why not take advantage of email addresses that reflect our unique identities?"
Besides helping subscribers identify with groups, Mailspace.com can help people express their individuality. Whether youre brainy or flirty, artsy or funny, whether youre into religion
or romance, sports or school, Mailspace.com will give your email address a personal edge.
Email addresses such as UserName@Post-Modern.org or YourName@Here24.com are
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freely available on a first-come-first-serve basis," said Barnett.
Subscribers can choose from more than 1,000 personalized domain names listed on the Mailspace.com web site related to locations, careers, political orientations, social groups, school activities, lifestyles, hobbies, alma maters, pets, families, jargon and more.
A college student may claim SendMoney.org, while a teen-age boy might find it humorous to attach his name to MuscleMail.net. A self-named gossip may enjoy NewsMail.org, or a young mother of four, TheTaxi.net. Others could express their views on politics with addresses such as ProChoiceMail.com or RepublicanMail.net. Whatever their choices, Mailspace.com subscribers will cast an image before their email messages are even read.
And because the service is free, people can activate several accounts with addresses related to a diversity of interests, enhancing their organization of incoming messages and even increasing their privacy. Corporate employees, for example, can use a personal account at their workplace by logging on to Mailspace.com, where their privacy is ensured.
Corporations will also find benefits to opening a free email account through Mailspace.com. A public relations agency recently found a uniquely utilitarian use for a Mailspace.com email account. The agency opened an account with the domain name RSVPmail.net to use for the multiple special events it plans annually. People can respond to special invitations quickly and easily through RSVPmail.net instead of using the telephone or snail mail, cutting down on agency phone calls and paperwork.
One of the features of free web-based email services such as Mailspace.com is that
subscribers can access their email accounts from any Internet Service Provider in the world. This benefit is especially convenient for college students, business travelers and other movers and
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shakers who may need to check important messages or just want to keep in touch with family and friends. Whether relocating or traveling, subscribers to Mailspace.com take their email addresses with them.
Our plan is for Mailspace.com to accommodate two million subscribers with 2,000 concurrent users within an 18-month period," Barnett said. We have projected from our research that the subscriber base could eventually reach 10 to 20 million."
Media consulting firm Jupiter Communications has predicted that by the year 2002, $4.4 billion will be spent annually for online advertising, Barnett said.
Mailspace.com will participate in that forecast," he said. Groups like Sigma Alpha have gotten us off to a strong start."
A 1974 graduate of Dartmouth College, Barnett is a 48-year-old Texas native who has been in business for himself since 1984 when he founded Pioneer Communications Corporation. Since 1991, Barnett has been involved in various communication and business ventures.
For a complete list of domain names and free subscription information visit the website at www.mailspace.com.
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