Inbox 2.0: Email Turned Social Media
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | November 14, 2007 | Share This
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Saul Hansell reported recently that both Google and Yahoo are hoping to leverage their existing email and personalized homepages into social networks. Hansell wrote:
I don’t have a lot of detail from Google, but I’ve heard from several executives that this is their plan. When I talked recently with Joe Kraus, who runs Google’s OpenSocial project, he said: “We believe there are opportunities with iGoogle to make it more social.” And when I pressed him about the relationship between the social aspects of iGoogle and Gmail versus Orkut or some other social network, he said, “It is much easier to extend an existing habit than to create a brand.”
Brad Garlinghouse, who runs the communication and community products for Yahoo, was a lot more forthcoming. He didn’t-have dates or specific product details either. But he did say that Yahoo was working on what he called “Inbox 2.0.”
According to Hansell, Inbox 2.0 would mean the addition of a Facebook-style news feed page and a profile users can fill out to share their interests, plus emails from people who are more important would be more visible.
Michael Arrington at TechCrunch is skeptical of Yahoo’s strategy - or whether Yahoo even has a strategy:
And now Inbox 2.0, but without any statement about integration with Mash or any other Yahoo properties. And, how does their recent acquisition of Zimbra fit into Inbox 2.0?
I mean, I follow these products for a living, and I can’t keep their strategies straight. Or even figure out if there is a strategy. If Inbox 2.0 is part of Yahoo’s big vision for the future, then tell us more than the bits about the news feed and profile pages. Tell us how it can change the entire company, as OpenSocial appears poised to do with Google. And if it’s just an experiment, why screw around with one of your biggest assets.
As a social network, Inbox 2.0 would really only work if all your friends have Yahoo accounts and are compelled to use them regularly (I can’t even remember the password to my old account), but there’s so little information about what Inbox 2.0 would do that it’s hard to speculate what it all means for Yahoo.
Larry Dignan at ZDNet also has an interesting take on this, wondering if social networks will lose out as everyday applications get more social:
Will Facebook be so hip when the service is mimicked by every app you use? Perhaps social networking becomes the equivalent of a standalone word processing or spreadsheet company (they used to exist believe it or not).
Sure there will be social networking winners. Facebook isn’t going anywhere, especially since it has Microsoft and a new ad system in its corner. The analogy here is Google. Most applications have search tools, but there’s only one Google. Most applications will have social networking, but there will still be Facebook. However, you have to wonder what happens to these lesser known social networking players.
I don’t think Facebook has much to worry about for a while. But if even Yahoo, with its huge user base, has failed at the social media game several times as Arrington points out, its likely lesser known social networking players don’t stand much of a chance.
Topics: Google, Social Media, Technology, Yahoo! |