Listserv has something to celebrate at 25

Fast Company magazine has visualized some fine facts about email on the 25th Anniversary of Listserv and comes up with some revealing factoids.

To create an email account in 1986, people had to wait for a programmer to adjust the codes and include them in it, according to the magazine, which covers the digital world and innovation in all its forms. This was cited as not being computerized in a computerized world. So the first automated email-list-management software called Listserv was created. Not many emails were sent using its services when it was first created, but today 30 million emails are posted daily using Listserv.

In 1989, there were only 1.8 million email accounts but by 1996 that grew to 100 million and in 2010 there was a whopping three billion email accounts. In the year 2009 to 2010 emails used by seniors increased by 28% while teen use decreased by 59%. The average businessman sends 33 emails daily.

Once business realized that email can be a promotional tool we were condemned to an evil of the modern world we now call spam. Today, 89% of all emails sent are spam, the majority for pharmaceutical products. So while, in 1985, 90% of emails were business related, in 2011 that figure dropped to a mere 8%. In 2010, 107 trillion emails were sent versus only 170 million pieces of snail mail.

Last year, 36 billion pictures were shared on Facebook, and 25 billion tweets were posted on Twitter. In 2004, AOL had 23 million users and Facebook only one million. In the intervening years to 2010 those figures have changed dramatically. Facebook now has 600 million users while AOL has dwindled to only four millions.