New York— Back in the days when the internet was in its infancy, every next person was excited to have an e-mail address, but today the scenario has completely changed as nearly every tech company is looking out for the holy grail of new services, software, SaaS options or enterprise 2.0 solutions. Lately, MySpace has joined the crowd and is developing a fully functional webmail product, according to knowledgeable sources.
Initial hint of this new service first became visible in the form of MySpace employees email address slowly being reassigned to [username]@myspace-inc.com, which some people have noticed. This is a similar indication that they are preparing to assign MySpace.com email addresses to users, which is exactly how Yahoo handled the transition when they launched Yahoo Mail in 1997 – Yahoo employees moved to yahoo-inc.com email addresses.
Although the product is still in the development phase, besides, the service does not plan to have any spectacular bells and whistles, also the reports are too hazy about when exactly it will be released. It is set at this point to provide the same basic functions as Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and the others. This may change as the development process continues, and if they do any beta testing you can be sure that it will change some.
Undoubtedly, MySpace mail will be in direct competition with services like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail and AOL Mail. The largest webmail provider today is Microsoft, with Hotmail (284 million) worldwide users and Yahoo Mail ranks the second largest with (277 million) users.
And surprisingly, with its current active user base of around 125million, MySpace, on launching the service would automatically become the web’s third most popular e-mail provider, and Gmail currently has (118m), according to comScore.
Messaging on social networks has to date lagged far behind cutting edge webmail services; MySpace currently lets only one-to-one messaging to other MySpace users, although integration with Google Gears in May 2008 dramatically improved performance.
With Facebook pouncing hot on their heels for unique visitors, MySpace is looking to stand their ground by entering an even more competitive aspect of the web. Facebook currently allows messages to be posted to up to 20 people and supports messages to outside email addresses, but the product remains essentially unusable as a productivity tool.
The initial beginning towards this mail service was made early in 2008 when MySpace integrated Google Gears into its messaging system, gifting users to search through messages and organize them by date, sender or subject — something that was previously unavailable, making the messaging system a bit of a mess.
It looks as if everyone is struggling to stay afloat these days. Messaging is one of the most essential necessities of the hour and an effective communication tools for MySpace’s 125 million users worldwide.
And MySpace will make a bold move if and when their new webmail client is released. Perhaps not the best course of action and some would even argue that they need to be focusing on the migraine-inducing layouts on many of the profiles instead of attempting a whole new service. But the question still remains if this new service will ever see light.
We actively listen to the feedback we receive from our users and are constantly evaluating new ways to enhance the messaging experience for our community. Our recent collaboration with Google to introduce the first search and sort mail functionality into MySpace was extremely well received. We do not comment on company rumors or speculation but will share more details on additional product plans when we have news.
It looks as if everyone is struggling to stay afloat these days. And MySpace will make a bold move if and when their new webmail client is released. But the question still remains if this new service will ever see light.