Yahoo Smartens up the InBox with Social Tools

Yahoo is now stepping up its efforts to compete in the social media space with an announcement that an upgraded inbox will incorporate social tools into the email experience. It’s a clear attempt to recapture the eyes that are more and more frequently drifting to Facebook and other social networking sites.

A press release from the company states, "The smarter inbox experience features a new Yahoo! Mail Welcome Page which surfaces messages, information and activity updates from people users care about most, as well as an updated inbox and folder view that filters messages from those personal connections." Sound familiar?

“The goal of the next generation of Yahoo! Mail is to address the changing communications needs of consumers by streamlining access to the most relevant and useful information, and helping users to become more productive, all from within their inbox.”

The competition is heating up and I think we can expect to see more social tools popping up in unexpected places as everyone jockeys for more of your “free time” online. What this means to companies, of course, is that there will be more options for social marketing. The longer and more meaningful the interaction, the better—that’s true of personal relationships as well as brand building exercises. Whoever best provides the opportunity for that level of relationship building will emerge as the leader in the space. There will also have to be a careful balance struck to ensure that ads and other marketing messages don’t interfere with those relationships. It’ll be interesting to see how it all shakes out.