The team behind Outlook.com revealed in a tweet that one million people signed up for the new email service in just six hours.
Microsoft unveiled its Hotmail replacement Tuesday at noon Eastern, and by dinnertime it had cracked seven digits.
That’s an impressive spike, illustrated in the chart that
@Outlook attached to the tweet (shown below). However, it’s still a tiny fraction of the user base of Hotmail, which comScore pegs at about 350 million making it the most popular free email service in the world.
One of the first web-based email services, Hotmail has been around since 1996 and was acquired by Microsoft in 1997. In rebranding it as Outlook, Microsoft has integrated social networks and replaced the formerly cluttered interface with a clean layout that’s in line with the design aesthetic of Windows 8.
The label on the chart the Outlook account tweeted out says one million people signed up for the new service, and we’ve confirmed with Microsoft that the number indeed refers to account holders, not mere aliases. Outlook users can create up to five @outlook.com email aliases per year for every account.
