The Year of the Social Inbox
With the clean slate of 2009 upon us, an endless parade of pundits, publications, and politicians are dusting off their crystal balls in hopes of proclaiming what 2009 will be “the year of.” Today alone, I’ve read that 2009 will be the year of the subject line, the “naycation,” thoughtful consumerism, and the ox.
Whatever 2009 will be, it will, for the most part, be unexpected. Taking this into consideration, I am prepared to make my prediction:
Microsoft and Yahoo will help make 2009 the “Year of the Social Inbox.”
After the failed merger of these Internet titans in 2008, I can understand fully if my prediction is met with skepticism. Each company, however, has been working hard behind the scenes to evolve their respective email inbox offerings in such a way that they fuse the best parts of the email inbox with the immediacy, control, and serendipity of social networking applications like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. If they succeed, they bring their millions of “old school” Internet users into the social media mix in new and extremely interesting ways.
According to a recent article in Ars Technica (”Yahoo begins rolling out social, extensible e-mail inbox“), Yahoo’s social inbox is already in limited beta and its features include:
- “My Connections” — Akin to friends on Facebook or people in your Address book, these folks get top placement within the Yahoo Social Inbox main page
- “Updates from My Connections” — Akin to FriendFeed, this sidebar aggregates updates from your Connections across a number of social media applications like Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube.
- A new Yahoo home page that eschews banner ads in favor of your more personalized updates from your Connections
I plan to explore what “The Year of the Social Inbox” could mean for email marketers all of this week. As homework for tomorrow’s post, be sure to watch the following videos from Yahoo:
- Yahoo Mail: Understanding the New Smarter Inbox in Yahoo Mail
- Yahoo Mail: Getting to Know Your Smarter Inbox
In so doing, keep an eye out for the “From Connections” option within the inbox. Should email marketers be concerned? More tomorrow…
The Yahoo Social Inbox - In Limited Beta Now
This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Future of Email, Social Media and Email, email marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
3 Responses to “The Year of the Social Inbox”
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Very interesting premise. Looking forward to seeing the other components.
January 5th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Sounds like a pretty safe bet, Jeff. Totally agree. The big question of course is how will email marketers take advantage? I look forward to your series.
January 5th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
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