Inbox 2.0 Makes Me Sad

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

1. Forumer™
   

   November 14th, 2007 at 1:09 am

   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!

2. mrpete
   

   November 14th, 2007 at 1:12 am

   Totally agree to you, Mike.

   Good point and good article

3. Alex H
   

   November 14th, 2007 at 1:15 am

   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.

4. Weekend Posts Pundit
   

   November 14th, 2007 at 1:23 am

   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?”

5. Kuldeep
   

   November 14th, 2007 at 1:27 am

   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).

6. Jones
   

   November 14th, 2007 at 1:35 am

   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.

7. GSpotByGoogle
   

   November 14th, 2007 at 1:38 am

   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.

8. Search◊ Engines Web
   

   November 14th, 2007 at 1:38 am

   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.

9. Michael Arrington
   

   November 14th, 2007 at 1:43 am

   GSpotByGoogle - wow. where did you infer all that from?

10. I Am Not Posting To Spam My Blog
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 1:54 am

    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.

11. micfo.com
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 1:58 am

    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.

12. Moe Glitz
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 2:44 am

    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

13. UJ
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 2:45 am

    I think Inbox 2.0 is what Zimbra brings to Yahoo. Zimlet is what they may be using for Social Networking.

14. AJ
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 2:57 am

    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.

15. Exchange3D
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 3:01 am

    No one can follow Yahoo lately. Sad Looks like the notorious “peanut butter manifesto” and “100 days” didn’t do any good

16. Exchange3D
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 3:18 am

    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.

17. Michael Arrington
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 3:24 am

    Exchange3D - yeah, I love it too! If only Yahoo said stuff like that.

18. Michael Woo
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 3:30 am

    I caught a glimpse of inbox 2.0 and didn’t like it. luckily i wasn’t forced to use it…

19. tomthree
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 4:02 am

    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.

20. Sri Technocrat
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 4:38 am

    nice article. must read.

21. John Moulton
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 5:02 am

    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.

22. phatbubble
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 5:04 am

    @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.

23. Sach
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 5:09 am

    Socializing Email …

    http://tinyurl.com/3cteyu

24. Rajeev
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 5:20 am

    For hugely connected and networked people contact and event management software are a necessary extension of Social Networks.

    http://tekno-world.blogspot.com

25. nick of cebu
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 5:27 am

    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.

26. Chris A
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 5:48 am

    I think inbox 3.0 is already here…

    It’s the absurd http://www.3dmailbox.com. And no, it’s not a fake.

27. Paul Short
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 5:58 am

    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.

28. Jean Thibaudeau
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 6:16 am

    Sometimes in business, you just have to be lucky, and throwing as much new products as possible increase your probability to get lucky.

29. Sebastian W.
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 6:27 am

    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.

30. I Am Not Posting To Spam My Blog
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 6:29 am

    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.

31. John McCrea
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 7:39 am

    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://therealmccrea.wordpress.....s-book-20/

32. Antje Wilsch
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 7:43 am

    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.

33. Bira Rai
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 7:48 am

    i talk about this specific inbox 2.0 idea in one of my articles take a look at
    http://birarai.blogspot.com/20.....ernet.html

    I know the idea needs a lot more refinement.

    Cheers,

    Bira Rai

34. Aaronontheweb
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 8:08 am

    Microsoft should just buy out Yahoo already.

35. John / SocialNext
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 8:16 am

    Another news feed? Am I going to have to make a Yahoo News Network too?!

36. ralphg
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 8:23 am

    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.

37. Pran Kurup
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 8:24 am

    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.

38. Jeff Barson
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 9:23 am

    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.sendsidenetworks.com

    It’s great to have a big target.

39. Jim Kerr
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 9:23 am

    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.

40. whoopie
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 9:45 am

    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.

41. AndyA
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 10:04 am

    UUsing the social network you already have is a
    feature of zyb. It uses the contacts in your mobile phone.

42. Raj Lalwani
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 10:07 am

    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.

43. Moses
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 10:19 am

    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.

44. Deva Hazarika
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 10:24 am

    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.emaildashboard.com/.....;emai.html

45. PJ
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 10:35 am

    I’ve used Norada for my email for years, gets the job done.

46. PJ
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 10:39 am

    Norada.com check it out.

    The Easy Way to Manage your Team, Clients, and Email without Servers

    * Communications focused CRM Solution
    * State-of-the-art Hosted Business Email
    * Real-Time Shared & Group Calendaring

    PS: I don’t work there, just a happy user.

47. Matt Brezina
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 10:57 am

    This kills me Mike; Yahoo and Google talk about it inbox 2.0 but we are actually doing it: http://www.xobni.com/learnmore

48. Wil
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 11:10 am

    They need to just buy Bebo and be done with it.

49. Peter Lurie
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 12:27 pm

    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”!

50. KwangErn
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 12:53 pm

    So is this the real start of Yahoo to make some serious integrated consolidation of their services?

51. Jughead
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 12:58 pm

    Facebook had their shot and blew it when they went Orwellian on the ad strategy. Yahoo’s got the e-mail base and if they can create a way to improve it, reduce spam and introduce smart social features and widgets that are useful, they could become a player.

52. AW
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 1:52 pm

    Wow sounds like a great idea!

    Yahoo! Mail is awful - spam filter sucks, the AJAX application frequently bugs out, and now they want to build a social network around that broken mess? Man, no wonder they’re going down the tubes.

    Someone over there needs to clean house.

53. Isaac Garcia
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 3:55 pm

    I find it interesting that Joe Kraus is running OpenSocial at Google - and not Jotspot or Google Wiki.

    What does that mean for Jotspot/gSpot, etc…

    Come to me my babies - let me quell your pain.

54. www.carversation.com
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 4:13 pm

    i agree mike.

55. carhug
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 4:42 pm

    I agree with your observations, Mike. If you can’t keep these various pieces straight, I’m not sure how Yahoo expects the common layperson to keep whatever it is they are cooking up for the day either. I hope your posting helps Yahoo wake up and smell the coffee! I will add that their latest enhancement to their email product was good and so was their search enhancements. Now, if they could only focus on improving what they have and less on throwing stuff on the wall to see if it will stick, I am sure Yahoo users would appreciate it. Also, it is really annoying the way Yahoo makes the user resign into every stinking web service they have scattered about.

56. NB
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 7:15 pm

    Hey Michael,
    I hope you had read the whole article in NYT before writing a blog.
    http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/.....technology

    In it; it is clearly stated that 360 is going away and Mash is an experiment only and was never intended to be a full fledged social network. And, about inbox 2.0; it seems to be a good idea.
    I think it is ridiculous that I get a notification in my yahoo mail when someone writes on my wall and than I have to log into facebook to respond. Then, I figure he was reminding me to send him some file that is there in my inbox. So, I have to go back into yahoo mail and email him. The point is; facebook doesn’t offer me email attachments so I need email anyways. And, yahoo mail doesn’t offer me “Wall” or network of people or other so called cool stuff. But, most of the people in my facebook network are the same as in my yahoo address book. And, they are the same people who I share photos with on Flickr or blog on 360 or share news. Call me lazy but, I’d be happy if I could chat with, text, email or poke someone from only one place (i.e. Yahoo mail, gmail etc.). Why would I be concerned if I have a public profile (managed within yahoomail) and private mail inbox (same as today) in the same place?

57. Tillman
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 8:31 pm

    Michael, I agree with #68. What you are saying is completely inaccurate from what is there in the article. I am usually an admirer of your blog but, this time you seemed completely out of touch.

    #6 Where did you infer google vision from? Orkut, google finance, youtube or picasa?

    #9 I think he understood the original NYT article and could read between the lines. Something, you probably missed.

    #10 Your comments don’t make sense. As Micheal has described; Yahoo isn’t opening up your inbox to the world.

    #12 Who says social networks don’t get spam? Your dear Google’s social network ‘orkut’ is the worst when it comes to spam. It receives more spam than an inbox.

    #14 If you are confused you are nuts. Are you high? “Next level of social interaction”. Next level is to meet someone and have lunch with.

    #16 Isn’t what facebook do and you go start licking?

    #19 check your facts first. If yahoo is guilty of doing business in China than you are too. I am sure you’d be standing outside bestbuy or circuit city at 1 am on this black friday to buy cheap chinese electronics. so, who is the f*** now?

    #40 You say yahoo is good at - copy. Tell me who isn’t? Facebook copied social network from myspace. myspace copied it from friendster. Look where is Facebook and where is friendster. So your assertion is just a strawman. Oh by the way where did google get idea for gmail?

    #42 Please stop spamming messageboard by trying to advertise your service for free.

    #43 Same with comment 43. Trying to get more eyeballs for your blog? I can see Google adsense money in your eyes.lol.

    #47 read my comment for #42

    #52 It seems that you are whining about things.

    Don’t mind my harsh words but, we should just wait and watch before we start bashing one product or another. Social networks can’t compete with emails. At most; it gives an opportunity to make new friends you can email, text or call later on.

58. Faramarz
    

    November 14th, 2007 at 8:35 pm

    Don’t be so cynical with yahoos approach Michael. coke japan comes out with a new product every two weeks, because they don’t know what will work and what won’t. 250million users are gold! any company that does not try and take advantage of that mass user base in every way possible has opted for failure.

    I salute Yahoo for keeping persistent, if anything!

59. Devang
    

    November 15th, 2007 at 4:47 am

    If Yahoo was focused they’d have figured out how to mine relevant metadata out of del.icio.us a long time ago and added suggest/social networking features. Make it more stumbleupon-like for all I care, just don’t lose the core features and let me choose what extra bells and whistles I want.

60. Dave
    

    November 15th, 2007 at 7:16 am

    Yahoo and Google are so Web 2.0

    We are in the era of Web 3.0 - where multi-national corporations buy and control the Net!

61. Rick
    

    November 15th, 2007 at 7:43 am

    Yahoo is as messy as AOL. Bad management. No vision, no clear strategy. Poorly-designed services, amateur in general, much advertising. It’s the absolute opposite of Google. Yahoo is too amateur and greedy at the same time. To date it isn’t possible to access Yahoo Mail using POP/IMAP unless you pay, and the Yahoo Mail is full of advertising. Gmail is free of charge, accessible from POP/IMAP and has non-intrusive ads. I don’t know how Yahoo has survived on this search-engine and email market.

62. Jason
    

    November 15th, 2007 at 9:50 am

    Its a good article but you fail to realize that on some level that are hoping that if they build enough little apps something will stick once they start throwing. Second they are looking to be a little bit more dynamic then they have been recently when it comes to generating new ideas and implementing them. You can call it an attempt to get at the google level of building apps consecutively. Also If they release the entire application to you and the world where is the element of surprise and immediecy that suprise gives. The chaos is a bit planned and a bit unplanned….keeps you guessing………..

    stick to reporting and not speculation if you must keep them sidebarred.

    Thanks,
    Jason
    Chicago IL.

63. Dave Nofmeister
    

    November 15th, 2007 at 12:35 pm

    I already am not very fond of yahoo mail as it is anyway. I just want a mail service, but it keeps adding a bunch of worthless widgets.

64. gmail user
    

    November 15th, 2007 at 1:35 pm

    interesting article indeed. you seem to underestimate these old web companies. google has still a long way to go to wash away yahoo. what strategic vision? more apps or more data inside? google missed out on the facebook api by following up with a weak friendster clone named orkut. google missed out on flickr by investing into the desktop app picasa, google missed out on folksonomy (because of adsense) and del.icio.us giving us the not so great google notes and some flakey personalized search notes. how will they manage to integrate jots wiki and team up against yahoo´s cooperation with wikipedia? shouldn´t they better buy and wikify britannica? then where is the app which integrates the apps, the better ning? unlikely that google mashup will be as visionary and easy to use as yahoo pipes. when will they burry google video? the constant weakness on the music and entertainment side, why didn´t they swallow up audioscrobbler/last.fm (and their massive inflow of relevant metadata )? the social graph is overrated as one of the last hysterias of this late summer of web2, it is one of many possible graphs in the area of semantic networks and google is quite busy ruling and understanding each and every niche at once. now they even want to replace symbian with their own mobile linux within a year… it still has to be seen if they will enter the linux embedded market too (openwrt)… meanwhile they are working on making search better every day, and this is where they should focus on making google the command line of the web instead of branching out in each and every area of web applications. they do not show all the intelligence they´d needed on the level of capturing enough sources of structured data. where is the support of microformats and rdf which would help to gain momentum for calendar and maps? it seems google runs into their own management problems. besides using email itself as yet another source of invite spam they could be rather preventing spam by establishing networks of trust and not just use opensocial a exchange standard for more unmaintained profile graveyards, but focus on productivity enhancement, coherent group conversations, and the integration of mailinglists, wiki, calendaring with email would mean that google gives gmail and groupware usecases a more central function to be able to compete with zimbra. it would be not the last time where yahoo has the better app and soon the (business) communities using it. so it´s totally the opposite. so why remembering every facebook app and in the long tail and the last hype around data visualisation features, eudora had it years ago and it didn´t help them to survive featuritis.

65. seamus
    

    November 15th, 2007 at 4:12 pm

    Google mints money from search ads. If anyone were competitive with them on that, their margins would be lower, and their golden glow would be less blinding.

    I read today that Google is building 1MM square feet of office space at NASA. What vision they have!

66. pusat
    

    November 20th, 2007 at 6:44 am

    Microsoft should

67. pond
    

    November 30th, 2007 at 12:15 am

    tyf