Yahoo Mail, iGoogle to take on Facebook?
The New York Times is reporting that iGoogle and Yahoo Mail could be at the core of social-networking plans for the two search companies.
"Web-based e-mail systems already contain much of what Facebook calls the social graph--the connections between people," Saul Hansell writes in his blog posting. "Yahoo and Google realize that they have this information and can use it to build their own services that connect people to their contacts."
Hansell says he's heard from several Google executives that that's their plan. "We believe there are opportunities with iGoogle to make it more social," says Joe Kraus, who heads up Google's OpenSocial project.
Meanwhile over at Yahoo, Brad Garlinghouse, head of communication and community products, said Yahoo is working on "Inbox 2.0," which displays messages from close friends more prominently than from strangers. Yahoo Mail also will be expanded to display more information about friends, such as birthdays.
If this is so, why are the companies experimenting with social-networking services like Mash, Kickstart and Orkut?
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor. 




Also, google's strength in search is not going to help all that much.
(note: all these numbers are from comscore and of US)
- the power is not in recreating facebook
- by devahaz November 14, 2007 10:30 AM PST
- Much deeper information exists within email interactions than most facebook communications. Rather than trying to recreate Facebook type functionality, the opportunity within email lies in using this deep information to provide much more powerful and relevant interactions between people than currently takes place at social networking sites. More on this here: http://www.emaildashboard.com/2007/11/inbox-20---emai.html
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