E-mail lists

Citation

(2000), "E-mail lists", Work Study, Vol. 49 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.2000.07949baf.001

E-mail lists

Keywords Electronic mail, Communication technology, Internet

ONElist (available at: http://www.onelist.com), the world's leading e-mail community with eight million registered users, has launched local language versions of its e-mail discussion group services in all major European markets. The European company, ONElist Europe GmbH (available at: http://europe.onelist.com), is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, and initially has two further offices in Paris and London. Marcus Riecke, 33, formerly Vice President, New Business, at AOL Germany, is Managing Director of ONElist Europe GmbH.

Marcus Riecke, head of ONElist Europe, said of the extraordinary growth of www.onelist.com, which can only be compared with the growth rates of ICQ or eBay:

ONElist has already written a phenomenal Internet success story in a very short space of time - eight million users within little more than a year without a single dollar spent on marketing. That shows the enormous potential of this company ... Now we will strive to help e-mail communities achieve a breakthrough in Europe and to establish ONElist as the category leader.

Worldwide, e-mail communities are one of the fastest growing Internet categories, and according to Jan Henric Buettner, general partner of Bertelsmann Ventures, they are still in the early stages of their development. Buettner explains the membership explosion at ONElist thus:

E-mail communities combine great ease of use with user-generated content and therefore offer extraordinary opportunities. Word-of-mouth and constant recommendation within the community and beyond, result in exponential growth without expensive marketing campaigns ... I'm delighted that with ONElist we are now bringing one of the most promising US Internet companies to Europe, and that we were able to win Marcus Riecke to lead ONElist in Europe.

ONElist is an e-mail-based community service which contains more than 250,000 communities on all kinds of topics - individual communities discuss everything from cars and stamp collecting to travel and stock tips. Users can register for communities and take part in ongoing discussions or start their own communities to serve their interests or their friends' interests. Information is exchanged via e-mail - more than 27 million e-mails are currently sent each day on www.onelist.com.

Members can take advantage of a variety of easy to use tools available on ONElist to manage their community. In addition to communal address books and files, calendars can also be administrated within an interest group. Community founders or "moderators" can also manage access to their communities or the sending of e-mails. Numerous security features protect user privacy and prevent Spam, and online customer support is available to answer user questions seven days a week. All of ONElist's features are free of charge for users.

At the beginning of this year, the company had a staff of 12 employees, which according to the business plan is to expand to a staff of 20 in the course of 2000.

Marcus Riecke about the launch:

We wanted to enter the market very quickly - so we started our local services for Germany, France and the UK simultaneously ... Phase two covered the remaining countries in Western Europe and we are now living with local language ONElist offerings across all of Europe.