A Bermuda-based free e-mail service which launched on Wednesday saw more than 1,400 new accounts register within the first few hours of going live.

Jorgen Clausen, group e-business development manager for MediaHouse Ltd. which is the parent company of Bermuda.com, said that by 3 p.m. on Wednesday more than 1,416 email accounts which allowed users to have ?theirname bermuda.com? had been spoken for.

While the majority of those sign-ups were for free accounts similar to those offered by Hotmail and others, 157 premium accounts were also registered by mid-afternoon. The premium accounts cost $29.95 annually and include 1 GB of storage as well as other extras.

Mr. Clausen said that the company decided to offer the public access to the bermuda.com address because a number of people had been asking for it.

?To be able to manage that for more than just a few users would be impractical so that was the real reason behind putting it in place. People want it,? he said.

?It is a state of the art system,? Mr. Clausen said adding that while Bermuda.com?s free e-mail accounts are supported by local advertising, he has actually outsourced the e-mail service itself to the same provider that operates excite.com and mail.com.

?I can see your name [when you register. I can?t see your e-mail and I can?t see your passwords because we don?t control it. This is an outsource and it is run by one of the world?s largest email service providers,? he said.

While parent company MediaHouse also owns other companies including the Bermuda Sun, Mr. Clausen said that Bermuda.com will not share its mail list with anyone including sister companies.

?This is Bermuda.com. We will send out an occasional newsletter to whoever signs up saying now on Bermuda.com you can do this, but we will not sharing or selling the list. My privacy policy is zero tolerance and it is closely guarded,? Mr. Clausen said.

Tourism activist Tony Brannon sold the Bermuda.com site to MediaHouse in 2004 and the new site was relaunched on April 1 this year. It now averages 8000 unique visitors per day and 90,000 page views per day which means that on average each visitor is checking out about 12 pages. Mr. Clausen said the huge amount of traffic boils down to the address.

?The difference between us and any other site is that any other [Bermuda site you have to search for, you have to go to Google and search Bermuda and then get a result whereas an average of 65 percent of traffic or more comes to us from a direct request, people going to Internet Explorer and typing Bermuda.com. That is the difference,? Mr. Clausen said.

Unlike the previous site, the new bermuda.com does not carry news from any media. It may seem rather strange since MediaHouse also owns the Bermuda Sun, but Mr. Clausen said that the decision to cease providing news on the site boils down to the fact that 85 percent of the site?s visitors are people from overseas looking for information about Bermuda. He has followed the lead of other jurisdictions that have sites focused in promoting destinations, by deciding to focus only on the positives.

?Bermuda.com traditionally was an information portal for potential tourists and it continues to be that. It continues to provide information for visitors and my mission is to show Bermuda in a good light and only have positive stuff. That is why I don?t have news on there, but we want Bermudians also to use it for information for themselves,? he said.

Bermuda.com also aims to have every event that takes place in Bermuda placed in its local calendar database. It is also trying to set up an online mall and also plans it add an interactive map which will allow visitors to look up certain attractions and even particular roads.