I met Saul Hansell of the New York Times earlier this year at a MediaBistro Blogging gathering down near Chinatown, in Manhattan, and really had no idea, at the time, he's written some fairly influential news items like Inbox 2.0: Yahoo and Google to Turn E-Mail Into a Social Network about turning "..e-mail systems and personalized home page services (iGoogle and MyYahoo) into social networks." According to the article in the New York Times:
".... Yahoo is testing a method that can automatically determine the strength of your relationship to someone by how often you exchange e-mail and instant messages with him or her. "
"....“The exciting part is that a lot of this information already exists on our network, but it’s dormant,” Mr. Garlinghouse said. "
My guess is Email that becomes more "socially aware" of my preferences will serve me better. In a way, Gmail is already doing some of this buy showing me who, of those who I corresponded with, are online right now - so I can communicate with them via G-Talk/G-Chat.
But I would say, if Google and Yahoo want to beef up Email - and they can do it without being too invasive, I'm for it.
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