New York — Once ubiquitous, having lost the email crown long ago to Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo, now continuing its efforts to regain its glory, AOL unveiled a beta version of the new AOL mail — aptly code named “Project Phoenix” — with snazzy features to streamline communications.
The announcement and new features is perhaps impressive. That is “Project Phoenix,” a reconditioning of the company’s online email service that comes in the wake of a sea of rumors regarding a new Facebook email service that was allegedly on the way this week.
The newly redesigned AOL Mail, “Project Phoenix” (Credit: AOL)
The new e-mail app, currently dubbed as “Project Phoenix,” is in beta testing with a fraction of sites 30.8 million Webmail users — is a vigorous new rehash that centers on tighter integration with external email clients scattered across an almost Gmail-like interface, although the full launch of the Phoenix is not expected to occur until next year sometime.
“We wanted to start from scratch and build a new product and free ourselves from requirements to build something that was similar to what we had,” said Fletcher Jones, senior director of AOL mail. “So we identified three key points to address in the new application.”
Project Phoenix is not a close sibling to the old AOL mail, more like a spruced-up (very) distant cousin. The new system can accumulate other e-mail accounts (point one), enables for quick multimedia messaging (point two) and presents the chance to grab a user name that might actually be, well, your real name (point three).
That is right. AOL is empowering its users to essentially “import” their accounts from Yahoo, Gmail, and other email services. The feature officially unveiled Sunday, but it is a gamble that stacks all the chips on the service’s interface and features — the company presumes that its users carry (and use) other email accounts across rival clients, and it hopes that you will be swayed enough to want to make AOL your default hub for all.
According to Brad Garlinghouse, Aol’s President of Consumer Applications, the company lost its way — and not just with email. But after more than a year in development, Garlinghouse, the force at the helm of Aol’s most significant redesign since 2007, is poised to take the lid off “Project Phoenix,” which launches today.
“We think there is a possibility to redefine what email is for the consumer,” he told Fortune last week during a walk-through. “I do think there has been very little innovation in the email space. Since Gmail, really, nobody has done anything that made you think, ‘Oh, that is interesting.'”
Probably more interesting are the other features which include:
- Aggregation of Aol, Yahoo, Gmail, Comcast, and other email accounts into one inbox a la iOS.
- A “Quick Bar” or shortcut bar above the inbox with short email, IM, text, Facebook and Twitter status update capabilities.
- Three inbox views — “expanded,” which allows viewing of the first few lines of each email, “compact” (think traditional), and and the Entourage-like “reading pane.”
- Web browser-like tabs for switching between user inbox and messages.
- A Mapquest sidebar adjacent to the email body that automatically detects addresses listed in open emails and offers directions.
- A photo sidebar that aggregates photo attachments.
- New optional email domain names.
According to CNET, the new design “appears a lot like Gmail” with some additional features blended in, such as a quick bar for easily writing and sending short e-mails. There is also a new Twitter-like side bar called “Smart View” for previewing the contents of e-mails and their attachments, as well as maps, conversation threads and other data.
Nevertheless, Project Phoenix appears determined on two things: speed and integration. During explanation, Garlinghouse repeatedly highlighted the new service’s near-instantaneous loading, especially when compared to Gmail.
Phoenix maintains e-mail addresses on the AOL-owned domains aol.com, ygm.com, wow.com, games.com and love.com, as well as it will also deliver messages from Yahoo Mail, Hotmail or Gmail. Other features rolling out soon will include further social network integration so users can check and manage Facebook and Twitter messages and contacts, Quick Bar file attachments, and news article suggestions based on email subjects.
It is part of a recent spate of AOL moves to reinvigorate a once-great brand that has recently been eclipsed by newer ventures like Google and Facebook. The struggling Internet giant has been trying recently to recapture its former glory and regain traffic and advertising revenue, an effort that spurred a redesign of its homepage, a push for more original content and the purchase in September of influential technology blog TechCrunch.
AOL hopes that Project Phoenix will tempt new and old users to the site. “Mail is a very sticky application,” Jones said. “AOL is really about new content. But building great content is not enough unless you can make people aware of it. E-mail is the anchor of our ecosystem.”
If you are interested in trying it out Project Phoenix, you can go to phoenix.aol.com website and request an invite. A broader beta phase rolls out early next year, but no definite time is set right now for launching the final product, Jones said.