Yahoo! begins testing a more social inbox
Yahoo! has begun rolling out its latest webmail interface that displays email based on who sent it. The possibility exists that users will rebel against having to manage an extra set of connection requests just to check their email.
The rise of MySpace and Facebook the last few years has the Web buzzing with the promise of every application becoming more social. But how much more simple and social can you get than exchanging emails with friends and contacts?
Yahoo! is creating a much more social email experience by organizing its inbox around people in addition to messages. For messages to show up on the welcome page by connection, you first have to add them as contacts.
Many Web surfers have ‘friend fatigue’ at having to manage contacts across the great many existing social networks. Yahoo! could be taking a great risk by adding this extra layer of complexity to what is considered a daily basic task.
It’s not clear how Yahoo! will decide which people to recommend as contacts. Presumably the people that you email most will end up being recommended as contacts, but there’s no telling whether those are people that you want to follow online.
Once you designate someone as a contact, you can see a stream of updates from the person in your sidebar on the front page. In the release video, I can see updates on who is connecting and activity from Yahoo! Buzz, Twitter and YouTube in the friend stream, but you can likely bank on Yahoo! services like Flickr being included as well.
In addition to all of these new social features, Yahoo! is releasing a plugin architecture for adding functionality to your mail. The plugins that will be available at launch include Flickr and Xoopit modules. Xoopit detects pictures and documents in your email inbox and organizes them separately.
The updated mail experience will be available through http://beta.mail.yahoo.com once it has been rolled out to you. Yahoo! users that aren’t interested in getting social in their inbox don’t have to worry, you can simply skip past the landing page as you’ve always done.
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December 18th, 2008
Love LOVE that inbox’s are getting a makeover. Applications like 2pad have been doing this for the past year already. Email photo minding, stand alone photo galleries that aren’t social networking linked. It’s good that apps like 2pad and Xoopit are out to reinvent the inbox.