Hotmail has long been a popular service for setting up “side accounts” for email. After all, it’s one of the easiest services to set up quickly, and while it’s not always the most competitive of interfaces for a primary account, it’s more than sufficient for a specialized “throwaway” (your “these people might spam me” account, your “this will distract me if I send it to my work inbox” account, your “I don’t want my spouse to find out about this” account, etc.). Well, Hotmail isn’t ashamed to be your secondary inbox. They’re even making the process easier, while simultaneously making the transition from side account into primary interface more appealing.
Much of this is being done through “alias accounts.” These alternate addresses are accounts you can set up inside your existing Hotmail interface. According to the CNET report, you can create these accounts in precisely the same fashion you would set up a new account. The only difference is you’ll be able to access your various alias accounts from a single interface without logging out, re-entering credentials, and logging back in. Once associated with your Hotmail account, an alias account can be accessed, replied from, or otherwise managed from your core inbox.
Dharmesh Mehta, the director of Windows Live, gave further insight into the service’s concept. “Today we all often have multiple e-mail accounts for many different reasons, one of which is that I don’t want to give my real address out to any site in the world.” He also acknowledges the need for different web personas by stating, “If I’m a hardcore gamer in one environment, and a conservative professional guy in another environment, there are different reasons for multiple accounts.” To address this need, the Windows Live team used their existing tools to create a single, seamless tool to create, access, and control various Hotmail accounts.
