Google to Add Social Feature to Gmail (opens in new tab)

Yay! ReadWriteWeb (aka, me) just posted on this too: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_creating_twitter...

The best part is, they've invited me/us to the Googleplex tomorrow for an event explaining "some innovations in two of our most popular products."

I'm so excited! It'll be my first time at the Mountain View campus. =)

Dear Google,

Please stop adding things to my Gmail that make it a worst email reader. If you want to make some sort of social center, please create a new tool that ties into Gmail. Gmail was a really great product 2 years ago, but you keep adding dumb shit to it and making it less stable. Please stop. Thank you.

What's with companies trying to be something that they're not these days? Facebook changed user's privacy settings so they could be more like Twitter, but why? Facebook does/did sharing photos, updates, and news with family and friends very well, and I can't understand why they're trying to go against that original goal of "closeness". I see the same thing happening here. I can't really see how tacking a status update feature onto Gmail will help Google in the social space.

more info: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/technology/companies/09soc...

The meat:

The Gmail move signals that Google remains serious about becoming a social media force at a time when some of Silicon Valley’s younger start-ups have stolen some of its thunder.

"It might look like a minor feature advance, but this is another blow in the war against Facebook," said Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at Altimeter Group, a technology consulting company.

This is confusing to me. How many GMail users who want to use social networking don't have a Facebook account already? It seems unlikely to me people will want to maintain a second (third, forth, etc) list of friends and upload their pictures multiple times. There's not much chance of people quitting Facebook to use GMail as a social network. Just a bad idea all around. Sometimes I feel like Google is really lacking focus. They want to be involved in everything yet they only do a few things really well.

Is it appropriate to flag a link that requires you to access a paid service to be of any use? I mean, you can argue it's a "spam" link, as if a WSJ cohort posted it, they may be hoping for subscriptions.

I'm eyeballing the link pretty intensely right now...

Hooray! Congrats to the team!

I wish they'd add spelling correction to their search.

Amazing what the power of Google's brand can do for press coverage on feature releases.

Yahoo Mail implemented this feature maybe a year ago and has the LARGER user base but got very little coverage.

http://news.softpedia.com/newsImage/The-Email-Battles-Gmail-...

>> "[To continue reading subscribe now]"

Yeah how about [To continue having a viable business model stop pissing off visitors with stupid pay/subscribe walls].

Sorry, offtopic I know. It just irritates the hell out of me.