Gmail to get realGoogle 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 …
Can no one just leave the original Internet killer app (POP3/IMAP email not GMail) alone?
I can see the benefits of incorporating instant messaging feeds (like XMPP) and perhaps even RSS but I like my email as it was intended, without the Web2.0rhea social networking bolts-on that provide just more routes for malware to come visit.
My inbox, my content, my privacy...If you want social networking go to a social networking site or if you must then just pipe the desired messages through XMPP (like tweet.IM); then again perhaps this is why I waved two fingers (one for Web2.0rhea, the other for spying on me) up at Google applications.
The SMTP protocol has always included a "real time" delivery flag that directs the receiving email server to output the email directly to the user (in whatever form that may be) rather than sen it to the user's mailbox.
And even if it didn't, it's hardly rocket science to do it anyway.
...but yes, I agree. What's wrong with good ol' email. Works perfectly well for me.
Gmail - Yaaaaawwwwwwwnnnnnnnn......
Social sites are, by definition, walled gardens. The equivalent of the local pub - you have to pop in to see what people are up to. The whole point of email is talking to anyone else with email, regardless of the provider. Sharing a status on Gmail and only on Gmail assumes that all your contacts use Gmail.
Gmail sends email. That's what it's (extremely) good at, but a large proportion (IMAP, mobile users) don't see the interface anyway and a larger proportion of the people you use it to contact don't use Gmail at all.
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?
Yahoo Mail just implemented this feature. It's rubbish and pointless, especially if most of your contacts don't use the same email provider, and it fills up screen space that could otherwise be used for pictures of happy young women using their laptops in the sun, or for showing emails or something. Hotmail also has it in their attempt to pretend to be a social network site (Come to Windows Live! It's so cool!). it's sad to see Google playing chase rather than innovating.
Perhaps Google has found something innovative to do with web2.0 to improve its ongoing beta Gmail project. Their Wave project has some interesting ideas in it. Why not carry some of those ideas over into Gmail?
if its a simple case of "i am pushing out my third turdle of the day" type status updates to send to all your contacts... why? Why would i want that sort of stuff sending to the guy who received my cv last week?
Guess I'll stop using gmail when this happens. Call me an old fart, or luddite, or crusty bastard, or whatever, but I don't see the point of "social networking" sites. Gmail is an OK webmail, but only OK. Frankly, I've yet to find a webmail that is as good as a desktop app. I check my gmail from thunderbird during the day (while trying to not be annoyed at their bizarre implementation of IMAP). I also don't own a Jesusphone, or Mosesphone, or Windowsphone, so I have even less of a reason to care.
What was I talking about? I forget. Must be time for the meds. Oh yeah, gmail... meh.
GMail is so good, because it does one thing very well - email. It's simple, clean, quick and minimalist.
Listen up Google - I don't give a rats a** what my contacts happen to be doing or thinking at that moment, and I'm not such an egomaniac that I want to tell everyone what I'm doing/thinking right now either. So please - keep gmail pure!
Andy.
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.
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