Saul Hansell at the The New York Times is reporting that both Yahoo and Google are planning to use their email services as the core of their social networking strategy over time.
Of course, by social network, they mean Facebook and MySpace. Not the already vibrant social networking that already goes on daily via my email inbox…no, we’re talking about widgets. and profile pages. and adding friends and linking to their profile pages.
Google’s strategy appears to be a little more well thought out. Joe Kraus, who runs OpenSocial, seems to be saying that he wants to open up the connections people already have in Gmail, and allow Open Social applications to leverage that data.
But Yahoo’s Brad Garlinghouse is talking about creating yet-another-social-network around Yahoo mail and its 254 million worldwide users (Gmail, by comparison, has 84 million). He says the project is called “Inbox 2.0″ internally, and has several features:
- displays messages more prominently from people who are more important to you
- Profile pages for you and your friends
- A news-feed that includes information about friends
As I say in the title, this makes me sad. It makes me sad because it is absurd for Yahoo to keep launching new social networking products, almost monthly, without what appears to be any sort of high level strategic vision.
A few months ago it was Mash, followed by a quiet closure of Yahoo 360. Earlier this month they let loose a new college/alumni network experiment called Kickstart.
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.
absolutely, 100% agreed. Yahoo has no focus and no real direction. Then there is the inability to complete products. Example: Yahoo Publishers Network, still in beta, after so many years. Hello!
Totally agree to you, Mike.
Good point and good article
I also agree with you Mike!
Theres also the fact that my email does exactly what I want from it right now. I don’t want any bells or whistles. Just give me simple communication when it comes to my email.
Guys, guys, I think you’re missing the truly important Yahoo! strategy here:
“Why build great products, when you can acquire 10 and 1 is bound to be a flickr?”
Its really sad that a company like yahoo really lacks vision. They are or were a very good providers of serivice, but they really lack ideas. I wonder if they’ll become next Microsoft…a company that just aquires new companieds and copies others ideas. (I’ll hate to see that).
Google has vision. Yahoo does not.
But with all these social sites, is there really enough people to go around to support them? Social linking is still much more of a young people phenomena . It is questionable if people in their mid-30’s and up will participate much in social networks on enough of a regular basis to keep the movement growing.
For me, I don’t care enough to join social networks.
you are missing a point here, yahoo tries to provide social experiences around its mail product, not build a new social network, as such, mash and probably kickstart will exist as stand-alone services, but people will be able to make use of these services from yahoo mail, such as looking up the sender profile directly from email, which I think it is a completely valid feature.
yahoo mail is becoming an integrated platform for many of yahoo services, such as SMS, messenger, calendar, RSS and notepad. I would not be surprised if they make it more capable, and I for one, welcome the move, as I would like to do everything in one place, it is all about efficiency.
There is also the possibility that they are releasing ideas in mass in an effort to discover those ideas that will catch on and take off naturally.
A certain percentage of those releases will catch on with the masses; they can then focus those efforts on them and perhaps integrate the others or just abandon them if they eventually prove useless.
We are in a rare revolution; Social Web 2.0 and AJAX has given a shot of adrenalin to the World Wide Web that has not been seen since 1999.
GSpotByGoogle – wow. where did you infer all that from?
If I want to social network, I’ll join a social network. I don’t want an email from my boss asking for a progress report appearing in bigger letters than an email from my mum telling me to switch on my mobile because my dad’s critically ill in hospital. The thought process behind this appears to be purely “what can we do with this”, with “it’s fine as it is” not up for discussion. Usually when companies start having that sort of meeting, the answer is invariably “put it in 3D”. Presumably they’re saving that for Inbox 3.0.
Most of the social sites are coming up with different interesting features, as an user perspective it is very difficult for being active in all social sites that you register.
Come on Yahoo you can do better than that.
People join Social Networks to get the right messages that they want from family and friends – and abandon their old email inbox services because of constant spam.
Will Inbox 2.0 conqueror Spam. Or will it now be a case of Spam 2.0.
Google’s current web strategy is straight on the money – whilst both Yahoo and Microsoft are currently lost in space.
Instead of Yahoo and Microsoft just acquiring a large number of Companies next year they should jointly offer an OpenConsultants Network, whereby consultants can present to both of them the best way to get maximum potential out of their great web assets.
The best OpenConsultants can then be rewarded with a performance related ‘New Web Strategy’ for either Company.
Inbox 2.0 = Rubbish 2.0
I think Inbox 2.0 is what Zimbra brings to Yahoo. Zimlet is what they may be using for Social Networking.
I agree, there is absolutely no direction to the way Yahoo is approaching this issue. If there is they have done a brilliant job of confusing the hell out of everyone.
I keep a very close eye on the developments around social networks as i feel they form the foundation for the next level of user to user interaction.
Open social is the first positive step i’ve seen so far that enables social networks to interact ( at some level ) with one another.
Creating another couple of social networks only seems to create a wedge in a growing community…
Cheers,
AJ.
No one can follow Yahoo lately. Sad
Looks like the notorious “peanut butter manifesto” and “100 days” didn’t do any good
After giving it a second thought though, if it is what GSpotByGoogle says, that makes sense, although, please, “profile pages” – that’s just too basic, that’s just “address book 1.5″. Can they give us anything real? Say, better search and reporting tools. For example, a search for something like, “I want to look at all the emails and IMs that I exchanged with my social circle about my party plans”. Or “alert me when someone in my circle starts looking for a job”. Can they do that? And seriously, what messaging apps need now are tools to sort through, search and consolidate information, not “another useless view of something I already know”, like a poping up profile view of the sender. Why? Do I not know when my friends’ birthdays are or what they look like? How often do you look at profiles of people you already know really? Profiles are for introductions, IMHO.
Exchange3D – yeah, I love it too! If only Yahoo said stuff like that.
I caught a glimpse of inbox 2.0 and didn’t like it. luckily i wasn’t forced to use it…
whats next? Maybe they should read my emails and inform my ‘friends’ what they think is relavent.
It is totally unneccessary for them to f**k with my email. Focus on making an amazing messaging platform and don’t think you now know the physcology of my social life through your algorithms.
At least this way its alot easier for them to not only turn over information to governments that jail people for writing their mind, but now they can now hand over ur whole address book so they end up in jail as well.
nice article. must read.
yahoo has a strategy, buy or make a product, let it run for a couple of years then kill it off.
Its worked for broadcast.com, 360, auctions, photos etc etc.
By this logic, yahoo mail is well overdue to be killed off, and inbox 2.0 looks to be the strategy to do it.
@10: exactly.
Yahoo needs either to be driven by a visionary leader (Apple), or to develop a visionary culture (Google).
The approach of bolting features to other features is just going to yield a Mr Potato Head 2.0, with a foot where a nose should be…and a fire sale to Google in another few years.
Socializing Email …
http://tinyurl.com/3cteyu
For hugely connected and networked people contact and event management software are a necessary extension of Social Networks.
http://tekno-wo...ld.blogspot.com
Boss, I’m not sure I’m feeling this post. Yahoo! are trying this that and the other and hoping that they’ll eventually get it right. It’s an OK strategy. It’s how most of us lead our lives.
I think inbox 3.0 is already here…
It’s the absurd http://www.3dmailbox.com. And no, it’s not a fake.
Long gone are the days when someone built something that “just works” without slathering it with crap over time, or selling it to a company that does. I like gmail just the way it is because of it’s simplicity. If they get it right with their new developments that’s great. If not, I guess it’s back to whatever the heck I was using before I switched all my email over to them.
Sometimes in business, you just have to be lucky, and throwing as much new products as possible increase your probability to get lucky.
it is good that silicon valley does not make the majority of net users on the planet. While yahoo is not performing at a stellar rate, they still are doing quite well. As far strategy is concerned, yahoo has a large stake in Alibaba. Google has what in China? Lets wait and see if opensocial lives up to the hype.
Remember the (false) quote, attributed to the US Patent Office Commissioner in 1899, “everything that can be invented has been invented”?
It may not have happened then and it certainly hasn’t happened now in a global sense, but in the narrow sphere of Internet services, perhaps it has. What you can be certain of is that when everything has been invented, people won’t say “Ok that’s it, now let’s go to the pub”. Instead you’ll get a very long period of people coming up with useless spins on old ideas to try and keep the gullible investors writing cheques until the penny drops. It feels very much like it might be that time.
While I don’t know about the specifics for Yahoo! or Google, it certainly makes sense to look at the intersection of social networks and other tools and services that are rich with who-you-know information. Certainly Plaxo is doing that with Pulse, which “brings your address book to life.” I’ve written about this topic a fair bit on my blog, such as with this posting on Friends Lists becoming “Adress Book 2.0″: http://therealm...ddress-book-20/
My boss just wrote about a great idea for yahoo creating a huge worldwide marketplace for all the small business owners, something new, an un-served market, they have the resources to do it. We’re all yahoo fans over here, but we too feel they are confusing. They’ve got a lot of sticks in the fire and I hope one of them lights. I don’t even like the new mail interface, AND I’m getting more spam from yahoo lately (before I never got spam in my yahoo mail).
I’m totally with Mike on this one too – I hate to see yahoo appear to be fumbling around with their vision. They’re still huge and not irrelevant, like some posters seem to think, but I don’t understand them either, and I’m a big user and a big cheerleader.
i talk about this specific inbox 2.0 idea in one of my articles take a look at
http://birarai....s-internet.html
I know the idea needs a lot more refinement.
Cheers,
Bira Rai
Microsoft should just buy out Yahoo already.
Another news feed? Am I going to have to make a Yahoo News Network too?!
I wonder how many of Yahoo Mail’s 254 million worldwide users exist. Yahoo assigns you an email address whether or not you want it –just for signing up with a service.
I get news alerts from them, sent to my ISP-based email address. I’m always having to turn off my @yahoo.com address in Yahoo’s preferences.
I think you are being unfair to Yahoo! You shouldn’t be finding fault with them for trying! Their Mail is a huge asset with a terrific installed base of loyal users. No harm in trying to leverage that.
Zimbra acquisition is just fine independent of what they do on the social networking side because it gave Yahoo a lot of corporate clients.
Also, I notice that Yahoogroups is not mentioned anywhere. It is widely popular and could also be leveraged. You never know Yahoo might get it right this time though Inbox 2.0 sounds kinda lame.
Email (SMTP) was good enough but the cure has got to be jumped. 60% of the worlds population now has an email address but it’s insecure an doesn’t function in any of the ways we now need it to.
The huge installed user base is the problem and these larger companies will never be able to jump to the next curve. It will take a startup without any of the legacy code and no users to create the change that’s both needed… and inevitable.
http://www.send...idenetworks.com
It’s great to have a big target.
A bunch of us commented on Yahoo’s social network efforts a few months back in this blog, and this post only underscores what we had said back then: Yahoo doesn’t seem to understand their assets. They have probably the largest aggregated social network in the world in Yahoo Groups, they have Flickr, they have Yahoo Mail. Adding a convenient and easy way to bring these together would be a great first step. Heck, even expanding the feature set and functionality of Yahoo Groups would be a tremendous move.
But, as they do again and again, they build in some odd direction that makes little strategic sense.
I will note that adding interesting new functionality to Yahoo Mail is a good move, outside of any other intracompany strategy. Innovation in the mail space is good, even if it ultimately fails to register.
yahoo is doing the only thing it knows how to do – copy. oddly enough internally there seems to be almost no freak-out over fb (yet). they’ll get the memo only when it is too late.
UUsing the social network you already have is a
feature of zyb. It uses the contacts in your mobile phone.
Social networking sites are indeed too public for most activities with one’s inner circle of friends and family. While such sites are useful for meeting new people or reconnecting with old contacts, most social interactions with an inner circle of friends and family occur over email. For that email has a big role to play.
That is our belief at Innercircle.cc which makes it easy to connect and share things privately with your personal groups via email.
Yahoo’s strategy is pretty obviously to throw a bunch of social networks against the wall and see which ones stick. The economics are such that it makes sense to try a lot of things and just close the ones that fail. More analysis at moseskagan.com.
The reason the strategy sounds jumbled is because it is. Trying to turn email into facebook is backwards. Much more powerful interaction already occurs within email. Taking advantage of that information to enable more powerful and relevant interactions is the real opportunity for bringing social networking concepts to email. More on this here: http://www.emai...#8212;emai.html
I’ve used Norada for my email for years, gets the job done.
Norada.com check it out.
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PS: I don’t work there, just a happy user.
This kills me Mike; Yahoo and Google talk about it inbox 2.0 but we are actually doing it: http://www.xobni.com/learnmore
They need to just buy Bebo and be done with it.
This truly is frustrating. Yahoo Mail is still not functional, even though it is out of Beta… they cannot even get the “To:” column to function as their own Help documentation says it does!
I have written for over 18 months, and they keep telling me that they are “investigating”!
So is this the real start of Yahoo to make some serious integrated consolidation of their services?