The Email Wars

Very interesting read that two of the powerhouses are going to use the email inbox to stage the social media platform. So is email the key ingredient to capturing interactions and the eyeballs? It seems that with this news it validates the inbox more then anything I have seen before. Email is the glue. And with social media use, email is the factor still bringing so much of this together.

But will this reduce the inbox in anyway? How will it look? What impact will it have on email in the inbox as it might now fight for even more attention?

Who needs InBox 2.0 when you can get Life 2.0?

Yesterday Mike Arrington noted the stories that both Yahoo and Google are planning to build social networks around their email services. But so far the plans seem to lack a certain ambition. TechCrunch UK has the scoop today on a new stealth-mode app which aims to map any social network against your email, be it Facebook, OpenSocial or LinkedIn, Outlook or Gmail, thus pulling out key trends and useful data. Right now Socialistics, is a Facebook app by Techlightenment - best known for developing the witty Bob Dylan app - which was interesting enough to win them an hour’s audience with Tim O’Reilly. Socialistics is now being ported to work with other apps and social networks. A recent test version on a Gmail account I have seen, brings up a slider which allows you to visually morph the themes contained in your email over time, and creates tag clouds of people and key words. Click on a word like “important” and you get a tag cloud and a graph about people most associated with that word. But Techlightenment is prepping a version which will map ALL your interactions with your network, including IM and VOIP phone conversations. In theory there will be no privacy issues as this information is meant solely for personal consumption. Not bad.