E Mail: Fast, Fun, And Now It's Free

With legislation on California's soon-to-be-deregulated electric utility industry coming to a head, it was Julie Blunden's job to keep the South Bloomington (Vt.) office of Green Mountain Energy Resources, a reseller of environmentally friendly electricity, abreast of what was happening in San Francisco. Armed with a cell phone and a laptop, "I am the poster child for the low-cost, high-tech, single-person office," says the 31-year-old regional director for Green Mountain. And her most vital weapon for zipping off 100-page documents and maintaining contact with her boss? E-mail--to the tune of 40 to 100 messages a day. "It's like an artery for me," she says.

Tapping into that vein is Hotmail Corp., the Sunnyvale (Calif.)-based company that provides Blunden with her E-mail connection. While other Internet sites struggle to attract visitors, Hotmail and its E-mail rivals have proven that it doesn't take costly content to draw Netizens. It just takes E-mail--free E-mail, that is. In the 14 months that Hotmail has been in business, it has nabbed 6.5 million customers and is adding a stunning 40,000 members a day. By contrast, it took America Online Inc. (AOL) nearly six years to get that many subscribers. "The growth of our user base has exceeded even our most optimistic projections," says Sabeer Bhatia, who co-founded Hotmail with Jack Smith.