Gmail to get realtime with Web2.0rhea makeover?
Plans to turn email service into Twitter, Facebook wannabe
Customer Success Testimonial: Recovery is Everything
Google is reportedly readying social networking features for Gmail in an effort to imitate Web2.0rhea vanguards Facebook and Twitter.
Pushing aside Google Wave, which Mountain View is apparently beavering away at separately, the firm plans to slot a stream of status updates from online chums directly into Gmail.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the company might announce the interface tweak as early as this week.
Yahoo! has in fact had a similar feature slotted into its mail system, which claims around 300 million users, since June 2009.
If the report is accurate, Google may be planning to eventually include content shared by users via the ad brokers’ other properties such as the omnipresent YouTube video sharing site and the less popular Picasa photo service.
Google currently offers its 176 million Gmail users the opportunity to update their status within its Chat service, but this effort looks set to reveal more of the outfit’s social networking midriff.
Of course, some might argue that Google is coming extremely late to the party, while purists will grumble that the company should keep Gmail free of Web 2.0 clutter.
But in reality the firm has been working for time at embedding real-time tech into its ad-sponsored online estate. So its decision to finally roll out the red carpet for the arrival of social networking at its door will come as little surprise to most.
Last week Facebook tinkered once again with its interface, making its messaging feature a more central part of an indivdual’s homepage. But inevitably, that move also rankled with some of the outfit’s 400 million users. ®
COMMENTS
I don't mind
as long as there is an OFF switch.
Otherwise Greasemonkey will sort it out.
Consensus?
It seems everyone here (and by extrapolation, every nerd on the planet without exception) is against this change - if we actually understood your hideous and incomprehensible journalese. Web 2.0rhea? Since gmail was the original web 2.0 site, it's hard to know what you mean.
If it's just status updates, gmail effectively already has this as part of googletalk. But having recently visited Windows Live (or Hotmail as it was last time I used it) I hope Google has no intention of following suit and trying to turn gmail into some sort of "community". It is, as Andy 40 said, pretty much perfect as it is.
lord help us.
I stopped using yahoo mail when they did this, mainly because everytime I logged in for my mail it kept trying to alert me to things like people adding (or I think they called it requesting) me or status updates or shit. It was annoying!
When I want to use facebook. I log in. When I find myself wanting twitter, I'll shoot myself.
In the mean time, can my email please remain just email? Failing that can someone recommend a free email site that doesn't feel the call of the bandwagon?
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Top 10 SIEM implementer’s checklist
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
