Understanding Email – In the past, sending messages to others was a complicated thing to do. Considering that at that time there were no post offices, no telephones, let alone sophisticated smartphones with a series of applications for communicating. Instead, people who want to send messages to other people, must use the help of third parties to convey the message.
In royal times, if a king, queen, or emperor wanted to send a message to another king or noble, they would send someone to carry the letter to that noble or king. But unlike now, the letter will take a very long time to arrive. Usually, the farther the recipient lives or the location of the message, the longer it takes to send the message.
People who use this way also have to pay a heavy price. Writing the letter is free, paying the cost of the person who sent it plus the expensive travel costs. Even so, there is no guarantee that the letter will arrive safely because anything can happen on the way. Robberies and accidents prevent letters from reaching the sender.
Today, sending letters is no longer that complicated. Besides having a post office ready to deliver your letters at a low cost, you also have a sophisticated smartphone that can even make you make video calls with other people. With all that technology, sending letters is easy!
Moreover, we can also use electronic mail or commonly abbreviated as e-mail to send messages to other people. Whether it’s people who are near us or people who are located in other parts of the world. With email , you can send messages to anyone as long as you know their email address.
Definition of e-mail
Email is something we use a lot today. Even though applications such as WhatsApp or Telegram can already send messages, photos and videos, the existence of email has not been replaced to this day. This is because even though WhatsApp is used for something more personal like photos with friends, email is more often used for work purposes.
Usually, employees will send certain documents via email to their superiors. Likewise, job applicants will use email to send their application files to the intended company. Seeing its function, email is clearly very important. But the question is, what exactly is email?
Email is an abbreviation of electronic mail . As the name implies, e-mail is electronic mail that is sent using the help of a computer, smartphone or tablet plus an internet connection. Actually, this email is the same as the letters we used to write in the past. But instead of writing on paper, we write on electronic screens. Likewise, when sending, we do not use the services of the postal service but the help of the internet.
Another difference is in the delivery address. When we send a letter by post, the letter will be sent to the recipient’s home address. Likewise, when we send an email to someone, we also need an address. But not the home address, but the e-mail address of the recipient, which is shorter.
Finally, the biggest difference is also the reason why email is so popular, namely its speed. Even though the post office is fast, sending documents or letters by email only takes seconds to minutes. All depends on internet connection. As long as the connection you use is stable, sending letters to the ends of the world won’t be a problem.
In the past, Yahoo! become everyone’s favorite email company. Nearly all of them have email addresses on Yahoo! But now, Yahoo! is no longer used and instead, we use Gmail by Google. Actually, Gmail is the same as Yahoo!, both in terms of functions and facilities. The difference is, one Gmail account can be connected anywhere, including a YouTube account.
Email today is widely used, but the existence of email that we enjoy today, actually has a very long history. It started in 1968, when the ARPANET network was developed and eventually became the forerunner of the internet we use today. Around the same time, an engineer named Ray Tomlinson was given the task of building a communications system.
The system was then called SNDMSG, where two people could send messages to each other. In 1972, SNDMSG became a way of communicating on the ARPANET network and used the “@” character to separate e-mail addresses and domains. SNDMSG grew so that it finally changed its name to Eudora which became the forerunner of today’s email.
Email Types
Children in the 90s may be the first generation in Indonesia to know the internet, we are also the first generation to play social media, namely Friendster. Likewise with e-mail! Before Gmail was used everywhere, we used email from Yahoo! Now that Yahoo! sunk, we use Gmail instead.
Regardless of the company, so far we know email as just email. Even though they look the same at first glance, email actually consists of several types, namely POP mail , Webmail , and Forward mail . What makes these three different? Let’s find out together!
1. POPMail
As we know, email is currently used by many companies as a medium to communicate with their employees. Bosses usually send certain work or documents to their subordinates via email. So, you might think that this email is the same as the email we use, in fact companies use the POP Mail type to communicate with their employees.
POP Mail stands for Post Office Protocol . This type of email comes from an ISP or an email address provided by the company to its employees. When you become part of the company, you will also get this type of email to be able to communicate with fellow co-workers.
One of the main characteristics of POP Mail is the domain used in the email. Usually when you register your email at Google, the domain that appears is the email name @ gmail.com. So, in POP Mail , the domain will not be Gmail but the company name. For example, if you work at Gramedia, the format of the POP mail you will receive is “email [email protected]”.
2. Webmail
Nowadays, smartphones are an integral part of our lives. Because of its importance, many people are more willing to miss their wallet than to miss their smartphone. Whether you realize it or not, a smartphone is more than just a communication tool. Besides being able to be used for communication, smartphones are also a medium of entertainment, even used for work.
Including sending important emails. Fortunately, not inferior to other applications, Gmail also provides applications that we can access on smartphones with just one click. Unfortunately, this one-click rule doesn’t apply to Webmail .
As the name implies, Webmail is web- based email . In contrast to other types of email that can be accessed in applications, those of you who have Webmail must open a website if you want to get access to read or send email to other people.
3. Forward Mail
One of the problems that many people often experience is that we often forget our email passwords or social media accounts. As a result when this happens, we lose access to open all of our emails. If you have this, there are two ways you can do it.
First, change the email password . Every technology company like Google always provides a password change option for those who forget their Gmail account password. Well, this is if the email you have is important, so you have to get it back somehow.
The second method applies if the contents of your emails are actually not too important. You can easily change your e-mail address . So, for those of you who frequently change email addresses for various reasons, you can use Forward Mail.
Forward Mail service is a service that allows you to forward emails to other users. Other users here don’t have to be other people, it can also be for other email addresses that you have. That way, even if you change your email address, you won’t lose your old email which is very important.
Email Functions for Everyday Life
So far, we think that email only functions to send and receive messages. Referring to its initial function, e-mail does function as a companion and recipient of messages.
But as time goes by, technology companies like Google are doing various ways to make email functions more and more important so that it becomes more and more difficult for us to look away. Currently, e-mail itself has many functions. What are the functions?
1. Sending and Receiving Messages
At the beginning of making SNDMSG in 1968, Ray Tomlinson made it for communication purposes in the military or educational fields. Currently, even though e-mail already has many other functions, they still retain their original function, namely to communicate.
Email is indeed not like social media or chat applications like WhatsApp, where users can not only send messages to each other, but also make voice calls or video calls. Communication on email is limited to text messages only. However, when compared to letters sent manually, email is clearly much more practical.
With e-mail , apart from being fast, you also don’t have to spend too much money just to send messages. No more boarding fees, postage and shipping costs. The only thing you need to ensure that the email arrives is sufficient quota and a stable internet network.
2. Sending and Receiving Files
At the beginning of its appearance, email could only be used to send messages. However, as previously stated, as time goes by, companies like Google are also trying to improve and add various facilities for their users.
On Gmail, you can not only send messages or receive messages from other people. More than that, you can send files in the form of photos, videos or documents to other people very easily. All you have to do is click the attachment button, and you will have the option to send various files.
Unfortunately, Gmail and similar mail applications still have limitations on the size of files that can be sent. In addition, the larger the size of the document sent, the longer it will take for the application to upload it.
This is sometimes a separate problem for many people. Where they are used to sending anything via email , but they can’t do it because the file is too big. This is quite confusing and forces us to rack our brains and find ways to send files in other ways.
3. As Self Identity
Email is something that must be owned by smart phone users, aka smartphones. How could I not, to make the smartphone function properly, you must register via email at the start of activation.
Apart from being a mandatory requirement for a smartphone to function properly, email is also a mandatory requirement for many things. Starting from registering for social media, you must use email. Likewise with many other applications such as e-commerce applications that require you to register using email .
There are two options, register via email or by using a telephone number. But most people usually prefer e-mail , because it can be replaced easily. In addition, telephone numbers for many people feel more personal, so they cannot be distributed carelessly.
In addition, email is also a must-have for job applicants. Unlike before, many companies now only accept applications in the form of . To send it, you need an email . Apart from sending application files , you also need an email so the company can contact you.
4. As a Marketing Media
Nowadays, marketing a product is easy. To do this, you don’t have to open a shop with expensive rental fees. Simply open an account on social media or an e-commerce application , you will get an online stall for free.
But long before social media like Instagram, or e-commerce applications existed, many companies used email to market their products. Currently, most are turning to Instagram or e-commerce applications , but there are also several companies that still use email as a medium to market their products.
Normally, social media and such apps come and go easily. Friendster for example, those of you who are Gen-Z children may not know this social media. You were probably too young when Friendster exploded on the internet and became the favorite social media for many adults. But believe it or not, in the early 2000’s, everyone had a Friendster. Suddenly Facebook appeared, costing Friendster all its followers.
But different things actually happen to email. Even though the feature of sending messages and documents is also owned by social media such as Instagram and also chat applications such as WhatsApp, this does not necessarily mean that email just sinks in.
As said before, Instagram can indeed help us communicate with many people, anytime, anywhere, and with anyone. However, social media is more open and we can communicate with anyone, including foreigners.
In contrast to e-mail . Email is more personal and the messages and documents sent are also more personal. You can follow anyone on Instagram, but just like with phone numbers, you can’t share your email address with everyone you talk to, right? Maybe this is what makes email survive even though its function can be performed by many other applications.