Saul Hansell at the New York Times gets some people talking at Google and Yahoo! for a write up today on the future of the inbox. It's a good article, based mostly on words from Brad "Peanut Butter" Garlinghouse at Yahoo! The gist of what execs from both companies say is this: the future of both email and start pages is in social networking. Much of the discussion comes back to Facebook. Hansell's post looked far into the development future of existing products - and it's a fun read.
I would contend that what's really at issue here are two concepts that Hansell and the execs didn't name explicitly, but which will be familiar to most of the readers here. RSS and Attention Data.
In the future, Yahoo! mail will include a feed of info about your friends' activities, just like Facebook.
Remember when the Facebook minifeed came out? It's a wonder no one engaged in ritual self-imolation outside the company's offices. People hated it. Now everyone, including MySpace, is adding friend feeds to the profile pages on their sites. It's a brilliant idea. It's essentially RSS is what it is.
RSS has changed my life, maybe it's changed yours too. I'm not sure what I'd be doing for a living if it weren't for Simple Syndication. Hoping you'd remember to visit this blog to read about what I've found after a day of manual searches? Probably not. That said, people in general have not gone Facebook/MySpace crazy for RSS. Rather, it took Facebook to introduce people to RSS in a way that was really compelling.
There's a long list of startups aimed at the feed-driven lifestreaming/social streaming space. Most also ask for your email login. If Yahoo! can acquire some elegance and integrate it well, they could own all of this space and make the word e-mail look antiquated. Another option would be to provide a scalable API for interface designers and let those of us who choose to live online like we use Snitter or Twitterrific. (I promise that many of the 10% of Americans interested in web-enabled brain implants would prefer the oversized avatars and auditory notification of Snitter.)
In addition to a Facebook type friend feed, Yahoo! says that profile pages will proliferate. Click on anyone's name and you'll be able to see their profile page, populated with the information they chose to expose to you. I believe it will be populated automatically by RSS and it will contain a shocking amount of personal/demographic information exposed not just to the world but to Yahoo! as well. Yahoo! already knows, all you have to do is offer to show people the faces of those who are looking at their profile page; scores of people will gladly expose their own face, demographic info and browser history in order to participate. That's why MyBlogLog was acquired.
Who was closest to making RSS mass market before Facebook? MyYahoo. What's far, far bigger than RSS though? Email.
The social network of the future will be populated by the RSS feeds of the activities of your friends and your friends will be determined by email. The big players won't put a major push into building a new social network. “It is much easier to extend an existing habit than to create a brand,” are the words Google's Joe Krause used to explain this in Hensall's article.
Your email account isn't valuable because it's got the email adresses of other people who could be solicited commercially - it's valuable because it articulates who in the world is able to command your attention. It contains analyzable, direct communication between you and the people most important to you.
Garlinghouse says that in the future email and IM will be prioritized depending on the importance to you of the people who send it to you. We're not talking about the number of times people email you - we're talking about the percentage of times you open those emails, the keywords used in them relative to your personal/work profile, there are metrics so crazy we can hardly imagine that are available for determining the importance of people in your life. In your email. Facebook's people-search uses some similar math already.
All of this is magic. Pick your metaphor, is it a nerve center, is it wizardry or is it a dystopian Minority Report-like future? Recognizing that all gestures we make online carry data with them, that data can move fluidly and that there's a deep pool of richness lying just below the surface of our existing behavior - that's exciting stuff. Bring it on Yahoo! and Google!
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Great post Marshall, but I'd say the only thing missing is the impact the users will have on these future scenarios. There will likely be a tipping point where the metrics being collected will simply be too invasive, and people will start to become far more interested in their privacy.
Once the average user becomes aware of privacy issues they'll likely get scared enough that the way they use the internet and the data they offer up will change so that most utopian visions of the internet will become extremely unlikely.
Posted by: Nic Hodges | November 13, 2007 8:01 PMI agree with Nic; the impact of users is missing. Also, though they wrap it up in jargon and make themselves sound intelligent about the future, it's sad to see great companies just stop innovating and rush to copy each other in the present.
Posted by: Pete | November 13, 2007 10:01 PMNic is right. Unless you directly couple user value to the act of deep attention data analysis (*intention* data) AND provide users 100% control over their profiles, the concern over privacy will eventually become a large obstacle.
Google (especially) already knows an incredible amount about each of us, what with their reach, and in my opinion is past the point where they can open up profiles for our control. Musn't scare the bunnies!
That said, I believe the next great features of the Web will be based on attention/intention data. Email is just one part of it, and yes I think for more socially-oriented services. I think Web browsing is a bigger part of your attention stream, when it comes to business, information and personal services.
Posted by: Jordan Mitchell | November 13, 2007 10:13 PMMy Profile - I want a single profile. I want to have a central platform that I work from to maintain my profile and information about me on all networks.
Contacts - I want a single point of entry for people in my life no matter what network they are on.
Individual Communication - I want a single point of entry for all communications and prioritized by the senders relationship with me, in any format, on any network.
Network Communication - I want to be able to communicate with my network of contacts, friends and family through any way that works for me and for them no matter what network.
Public Communication - I need to communicate easily with the general public whether it is a web site, blogging, podcasting, writing press releases, or selling my services.
Information - All the information I need daily to make decisions and educate myself should be right at my finger tips.
Schedule - I should be able to easily manage my private and public schedule with ease and syndicate or publish as needed to my calendar, network or to the Internet as needed.
Storage - Everything I store on my hard drive should be in one central place and then be able to distribute where ever I need or want it.
Applications / Tools - I really need an application framework that is desktop, rich, and web all at once. Then I can add and remove anything without any effort no matter whether it is free or piad. I should be able to grab whatever application or tool and add to my browser, toolbar, homepage, or anywhere that works for my way of working and the platform I am on.
Posted by: Kin Lane | November 14, 2007 12:31 AMEmail is still very timeline oriented for most of us. Unless your email volume is really huge and you get mail from a very wide variety of people, attention analysis and other metrics might be an overkill for average users.
I am also not sure of how this will manifest in a work environment (as opposed to Yahoo! and GMail, which are for all practical purposes, personal email addresses for most of us). Metrics like frequency will have a hard time since a mail from my VP, which comes once in a blue moon, is likely more important than a mail from my teammate who sends me a dozen mails a day.
It will be fascinating to combine email and RSS in interesting ways. Say there is a long email thread (or a mailing list) that I am marginally interested in and hate having it clog up my inbox - I want to push a button and have it published as a feed that I can read in leisure in my feed reader. There is lot of innovation still to be seen in Email!
Posted by: Gowri | November 14, 2007 3:14 AMHi,
good post! I agree with Kin Lane.
I think that netvibes.com could evolve in order to achieve that huge task of becoming The Single Socila Interface homepage. The big advantage would be that it is "independent" from megagroups as Yahoo, Google, Microsoft..
Posted by: netviber | November 14, 2007 3:54 AME-mail, I.M., blogs, aggregators and social networks will merge eventually. ISS (Instant Syndicating Standards) is a framework that brings them all together and puts users in control of their information in a more intuitive way. The framework is pretty straight forward and is based on open standards.
Posted by: Nick Vidal | November 14, 2007 4:19 AMThe main reason that RSS isn't taking off as it should outside the tech community is that Average Joe doesn't know what to do with is. Apps like Google Reader are great, but I've tried to explain RSS and what a feed is to a number of non-tech people, and they just don't really see the point.
I love it, though :)
Posted by: Neil Barnwell | November 14, 2007 8:54 AMThis post hits the nail on the head. It's not about email becoming Facebook. It's about utilizing the information, relationships, and context within email to make interactions more powerful and relevant. It's using email information as one more part of the "structured web" that has been written about here quite a bit. I've written a bit more about this here: http://www.emaildashboard.com/2007/11/inbox-20---emai.html
Posted by: Deva Hazarika | November 14, 2007 10:22 AMI love reading about technology mostly as a psychological study. With every latest/greatest/faster/better trend comes a own set of groupies who inevitably disagree with and dislike the previous tech's groupies. Inevitably geekfights ensue.
The majority of people high on Web 2.0 vapors have forgotten that privacy matters a lot to most Netziens and that there is a critical limit to how much information we really need or want about our friends. Then again, most geeks have forgotten that there is a life off the grid.
Posted by: InRussetShadows | November 14, 2007 10:44 AMThe future of the internet is social interaction, and I think Facebook is the site that has it all figured out.
Posted by: Dave Nofmeister | November 14, 2007 1:36 PMI agree with Kin. Oh my GOSH do I agree with Kin. I'm completely drowning in social networks, e-mail etc. And none of this addresses work/life balance as it relates to our online lives - my work life on our corporate network and my personal online life. ARGH!!!
It'll come and it'll be big.
Posted by: Steve | November 14, 2007 2:53 PMit is also, The majority of people high on Web 2.0 vapors have forgotten that privacy matters a lot to most Netziens and that there is a critical limit to how much information we really need or want about our friends. Then again, most geeks have forgotten that there is a life off the grid.
Posted by: Rahen Mckinny | November 14, 2007 3:16 PMJust what I found interesting, especially in reference to the third comment...is...actually gold that tought for a second.
Posted by: Zzz | November 14, 2007 6:26 PMSo, clearly here, we have two web giants, but were missing (at least) one...the Microsoft, aka MSN and Windows Live Entities.
Here's me thought....when I read "Yahoo! says that profile pages will proliferate. Click on anyone's name and you'll be able to see their profile page, populated with the information they chose to expose to you."
I instantly thought of what was MSN, and is now Windows live, spaces. These were all the rage, not just recently, but 10 years ago!!
Many of myt E-Mail contacts then, when I was much younger, had this profile, where just as stated, people chose how much information they wanted to show, and even to who. Now imagine, if MS had put a wall, or comments part on the profiles back then....they might have been the biggest social network today! And now,, with WL Spaces, and its integration with Messenger, there also exists the RSS aspect you talked about....on WLM, you can choose to have your contacts info updated automatically per their profile details.
So it sounds like a lot of this is just stuff that's actually been around for a while....and that this time, for this, MS might have actually been hugely ahead of the game....but they keep their lead perhaps.
**Note....Windows Live Spaces is actually currently the most popular blogging service.
And on a sidenote....why does it seem these days that FB is always mentioned, yet Myspace, which is still so much bigger doesn't get mentioned. Except that in the context of this article it atually makes sense, with the google person talking of the rss aspect, but still...
And that's my two cents.
Sorry, just as well...
Posted by: Zzz | November 14, 2007 6:30 PMhi5.com is also never mentioned, though traffic wise, it is only two spots lower on the web traffic rankings (Recently though both have grown significantly, FB did a little more so.) But I guess our media just doesn't care about South American online users, where many of hi5 users live!
Finally Yahoo! wants to improve their stuff. But why model after Facebook? Do they want their application look like Facebook or use only the important and good features of Facebook into their own stuff? Bottomline, I would like to see which direction they move to!
Posted by: Bloghash.com | November 16, 2007 6:07 AMThis article has some really scarry parts, - Major companies will be increasingly able to spider the lives of customers, but with that cost in mind, i am still looking forward to a faster and more dynamic www.
Develop
Posted by: Loke Hansen | November 19, 2007 12:30 AM