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Today, Posterous, the site we previously referred to as a "minimalist blogging platform", has again expanded its functionality in its own, minimalist fashion. This time, rather than adding rich editing features or increasing social interaction the service has gone and reinvented one of the Internet's "wheels" - the email list.

We spoke with Posterous co-founder and CEO Sachin Agarwal yesterday and he told us that the new feature is an "email list on steroids" and that it's "the last email list you'll ever need."

Email can be a burden. Whether you're sitting at your desk obsessively checking your inbox for that special email while you should be doing other things or you're surreptitiously glancing at your smartphone while you're out on the town, it can be a constant distraction. Would phone calls have made it this far if you constantly had to ask your device "is someone calling me?"

Enter AwayFind, a Web-based service that lets you escape your inbox by alerting you to those critical, "can't miss" messages. And today, AwayFind leaves beta with the arrival of an iPhone app that makes separating yourself from your email account easier than ever before.

If you work in the digital marketing field chances are you've met someone with "mobile marketing" in their title. Not long ago there were no such roles, but today mobile plays such an important part in the marketing and fulfillment mixes for many businesses that one or more dedicated resources are necessary. It goes without saying that the same case could be made for those specializing in social media marketing.

As mobile and social media functions establish themselves, they join another, more mature digital channel: email. Unlike offline or analog marketing, digital channels present marketers a lot of flexibility around the frequency and timing of campaigns and other types of communication. When you consider as well that many consumers are often opted into multiple channels, there's the possibility that messages from different channels compete with one another for attention.

Last night 500 Startups co-hosted an event called Inbox Love on the Google campus that brought together a number of entrepreneurs and companies who are working in the email space. The night featured several ignite talks, starting with Google's Stephanie Hannon who gave a post-mortem on Google Wave's attempts to revolutionize email and ending with Facebook developer Joel Seligstein who spoke about Monday's launch of its new messaging system. Being in company like Facebook and Google may be a little daunting for startups who too are attempting to address some of the problems surrounding email.

But if you need still more reasons why launching an email startup may be an uphill battle, Bijan Marashi can list them for you. Marashi is the co-founder and former CEO of Xoopit, an email indexing service that was acquired by Yahoo last year.

At Facebook's Mobile Event two weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg said that there was still at least "one big announcement" to come this year. And as we're hearing rumors that Facebook is about to unveil "Project Titan," it seems likely that today is it.

Facebook is holding a press event this morning where it is expected to launch a web-based email client, as well as further integration with Microsoft's Office Web Apps. Some are speculating that users will also get access to their own personal @facebook email account.