Wow. Just… Wow.
Remember how in the early days of the Internet Economy, the mid to late 1990s, there were bidding frenzies over hot domain names like auction.com, books.com, music.com, on the assumption that such “cachet names” would be extremely valuable? That’s all laughable now, right? Maybe not. Evidently some people out there think (a) that email domains at least really do carry that kind of valuable cachet, and (b) that NYC is so ubercool that it’s EXTRA valauble.
You see, I’ve been using an email address of “<first_init+lastname>@nyc.com” as my primary email since 1998. While at some point it changed to being a Gmail hosted service, for all that time it’s been free. No more.
I just got notified that starting on Jan 1st., 2014 it will still be hosted by Gmail, but will become a “premium service” charging a fee for the cachet of having “nyc.com” as an email domain. That’s all the “value added” they’re giving for the fee.
And what is that fee? Ah! I can’t even bear to type it, or to describe how there’s a steeply sliding schedule that assigns more and more value to shorter and shorter email handles. Just look at the screencap I took, since history and common sense shall surely sweep evidence of this away in short order.
[NOTE: Those insane fees look insane enough at a quick first glance, but look closer… At the payment period.]
Welcome to New York! The concrete jungle where dreams are Play-D’oh!
BTW, if you visit their website at mail.nyc.com to try to sign up for the hottest new email address on the planet, you’ll find you need a special “invite code” to be cool enough to give them money this early. As an existing user, I was invited to do so under “special terms” (no “setup fee” and a discounted annual fee of $199, though for 2014 only - after that, I’d be paying the regular fee).
Since I have decided, after due consideration, to regretfully decline this opportunity, you can use my invite code if you like: 9286. That way you can verify that handles like, oh, “JayZ@nyc.com” are still available! I can’t see how anybody wouldn’t snap that up right now!