AOL Mail finally enters the 20th century

I was on my personal AOL webmail account tonight when I noticed something that I have not seen before, at least on AOL. On the left hand panel of the mail screen, sandwiched between the folders titled “Inbox” and “Sent” is a new folder called “Draft.” AOL webmail users can now save unfinished emails on their accounts without having to entertain complex workarounds such as saving them onto a Word document or emailing them to themselves.

 

When I went onto the AOL/AIM Mail Product Insider Blog to read the announcement, I realized that the real story is not the addition of the new functionality but the absence of it for so long. I first heard of Hotmail more than ten years ago before it was owned by Microsoft and I don’t recall it ever not having had the “Save as draft” functionality. The same can be said about other major providers of free email such as Yahoo! and Gmail. Yet AOL somehow has managed to survive for so long without adding this much needed functionality is a story within itself.