Social networks of the future could be email based

Filed under: Internet, E-mail, Web services, Google, Yahoo!, Social Software

Social networks of the future could be email based

by Brad Linder Nov 13th 2007

While Facebook, Friendster and MySpace are the big names in social networking these days, tomorrow's social networking giants could be Yahoo! and Google. And we're not talking about Google's OpenSocial platform.

The New York Times' Saul Hansel suggests that Yahoo! and Google are working on bringing social networking features to your email account. Think about it. What's the first thing that happens when you sign up for Facebook? The service scans your email address book to find friends who are already members. There's a lot of valuable information in your inbox. So it makes sense that the companies providing your email service might want to build on that information and give you a few more reasons to stick around their site all day.

Yahoo! is working on "Inbox 2.0," or a way to make your inbox a bit more social. For example, users will be able to build profiles so that if you click on the name of a person who sends you a message, you should be able to find out more about them. Yahoo! is also working on technology that will analyze your relationships with the people you are sending and receiving mail from. Rather than display your email chronologically, your email could be organized based on your relationship with the sender.

Google's plans are a bit less clear, but Hansel reports that they are definitely up to something.

Tags: email, gmail, social-network, yahoo!-mail

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Peter said 8:48AM on 11-14-2007

Hi,
Hate to put a damper on all you folks excited about the future of email networking.
When I started out on the net in 1994/5 I used Eudora and was a part of the Eudora Forum where I met many smart ,pioneering people who increased my knowledge of the net and computers in general exponentially.
The eudora forum was just one of many around.
We had digital watches back then too,

so sorry to tell you, but this is just a case of "Back to the Future". Old News Folks, the only thing new is it's all online these days with web 2,0 etc. but the good news is that I always thought the email forum worked fine.
How old was the person who posted this anyway?
cheers
peter p

kris said 8:48AM on 11-14-2007

I use a free service from a website called www.plaxo.com, which has similar aims -- it's synchronizes all my computers' address books and other organiser information, but also attempts to share/network this concept with my contacts.
there are some people who are nervous about these sites holding databases of personal data, but the internet-connected world has probably reached the point of no return as far as demographic privacy goes.

Peter said 8:48AM on 11-14-2007

this sounds exactly like the old email forums which were everywhere on the web when I started in 1994/5 The Eudora Forum was a great one full of interesting, savvy people most of whom seemed to be actual adults as well as being smart and helpful. A far cry from the dweebs on many social networks now. I learnt a great deal about computing from the poepl in the Eudora Forum, even getting assistance from the guys who built Eudora ( It was a great email programme - the best actualy and I still miss it even when I use Thunderbird - forget about OUtlook 07 try Eudora 1994!
I'm thinking the person who posted this is a little less knowlegable about the web than they should be.
The good news is email forums worked fine. But it's "Back To the Future" for this idea in reality.
Cheers
Peter p

Mysterius said 8:48AM on 11-14-2007

So... your real name's "Bradford"?

Kin Lane said 8:48AM on 11-14-2007

I do not care how someone communicates with me, as long as the messages are received and easy for me to filter, read, respond, store and search.

I would like all emails, instant messages, text messages (SMS), voice mails, network alerts and even faxes to come through in an easy to read format and organized based upon the senders relationship with me.

My social networking and relationships should come together to restore the honor of the INBOX!!

dean cameron said 10:55AM on 11-14-2007

There was a great service called tightcircle.com whose entire focus was on community building through email. Their philosophy was what the guy in the times was talking about.

Andrew Schrock said 11:27AM on 11-14-2007

Email uses antiquated technology to link users to contextual data, deliver messages, and verify identify. The reason social networks email people is because it's one of the few communication methods that people actually save correspondences from, and it's emerged as a standard for user notification. Building a social network built around email is a terrible idea. If anything is accomplished here, it will, at best, be a bit of nice drywall over a rotting frame and foundation.

I'm also missing what "Inbox 2.0" actually is; How is a profile created in this scenario different from, say, a vcard? Does the program use NLP to extract contextual data from emails? Similarly, the Yahoo! organizational scheme doesn't seem to have any "social" features to speak of, and sounds here very similar to existing schemes for sorting and storing email.

In any case, let's leave the past in the past and move forward with mature, standardized, reliable technologies that can serve communities well into the future, not a technology such as email that was not built to anticipate current uses of the Internet.

TORO said 1:21PM on 11-14-2007

Inbox 2.0 ftw

Deva Hazarika said 1:41PM on 11-14-2007

Building out profiles and things like that is nice, but for the contacts that matter, you already know all that information. Taking advantage of the context and information stored within email is a much more powerful opportunity. More in this blog post: http://www.emaildashboard.com/2007/11/inbox-20---emai.html

lroeder said 8:00PM on 11-21-2007

Gmail has their email chat. This is sort of like an email social network, except you don't have a profile page. I remember Eudora forums, sometimes I miss the simpler days.

evelina said 6:21PM on 11-30-2007

blackplanet sent me a verication number that didn,t work what can i do.

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

View more Time Wasters