Saul Hansell’s post at NYTimes has put email at the center of social networking strategy discussion. “Inbox 2.0 Yahoo and Google to Turn Email into a Social Network” talks about how Yahoo and Google plan to turn their email user base into rich social network experience-

Web-based e-mail systems already contain much of what Facebook calls the social graph — the connections between people. That’s why the social networks offer to import the e-mail address books of new users to jump-start their list of friends. Yahoo and Google realize that they have this information and can use it to build their own services that connect people to their contacts

Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing:

Email is where we work, communicate, organize, establish relationships, seek new business, approve things, and ask questions. It is the natural place to leverage our social network and collaborate to get things done.

LinkedIn is great as a business network. Why aren’t those features built into our Email Contacts? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to find anyone and connect with them through our existing network of contacts? Why not have pictures attached to each email contact?

Om Malik, who spotted this gap long time back is bit skeptic on Google and Yahoo’s ability to pull this off:

While it is great to hear what Yahoo and Google want to turn email-into-a-social-environement, I won’t hold my breath to see something happen. Yahoo, apparently had plans to make email social a while ago, but tossed out the idea. So why would this time be any different? Yahoo and Google seem to have good intentions, but they would be better if backed by hard facts: like when will these features actually materialize for real!

Michael is wondering how Inbox2.0 ties-in Yahoo Mash and Zimbra -

And now Inbox 2.0, but without any statement about integration with Mash or any other Yahoo properties. And, how does their recent acquisition of Zimbra fit into Inbox 2.0?

Marshall has a great point which basically closes the debate on the role and value of email in emerging social media space -

Your email account isn’t valuable because it’s got the email adresses of other people who could be solicited commercially - it’s valuable because it articulates who in the world is able to command your attention. It contains analyzable, direct communication between you and the people most important to you.

We are glad to see action in this space as it makes our value proposition communication easy. People get social networking, people get email and when we tell how MessageDance creates value by tying the two together they immediately get it.