This is a brilliant comment and excellent addition to the discussion. Thanks so much! I never knew gmail was trendy and Yahoo was less so. You rock!

In some industries (specifically entertainment), it may be off-putting to have a period in the email address. You can think of a period as a tie. If you wouldn’t wear a tie, don’t use the period (my rule of thumb). For this reason, I like to keep several email addresses.

Finally, a small note about “freebie” addresses and please excuses my generalizations. In tech circles there’s a class structure to these services. Gmail is used by people who are trendy, cool, and surgically attached to their email accounts (Google has the best spam filter of the free services and you rarely have to worry about someone with a gmail address losing your email). Yahoo is mainly older crowds with less technology reflex (“if it works, why change it?” attitude). Lastly, there’s the old AOL email addresses which make their human counterparts look like dinosaurs.