Email 2.0 versus Social Networking

There is a huge difference between network and networking with respect to social networking space. Network can be primarily defined as connecting with people-known or unknown whereas networking is within the boundaries of known people (be it in form of friends etc). Now the promise is very well delivered by all those social networking sites like myspace, facebook etc.

Now there is something which is left behind between all these. Or is it? Remember Web email services of the likes of Yahoo Inc, Microsoft Inc, or Google. Now we used to use these email services primarily for sending and receiving those boring and mundane messages. But nowadays it seems that these email providers are trying to run away with some of the thunders of social networking sites. They are adding features that allow users to perform certain sociable functions as connecting with friends and creating personal-profile pages for others to see.

So this is surely going to increase the competition between those old daddies of Web email services and new Gen Y social networking maestro's for loyalty of users and revenues from online advertisements.

But the question is who's going to win this. Now my take on this would be from my personal experience. Since I still use both these services to an equal amount, so I would take a fair and balance perspective on it.

1. Most of the social networking sites provide us with IM service . So most of the users use it as an effective alternative email service. So email service providers don't have an edge.
2. Social networking sites have given enough importance to the word "I" which email service providers haven't yet i.e. "I" is the new word in the Web 2.0 model.
3. Since most of the email social services work effectively only when most of my friends are hooked onto same service provider, so tracking all my friends on a common platform becomes difficult (still there are reports that email service providers are trying to extend this service across all networks- but the bottleneck would be sharing users' personal info).
   
4. Slowly and steadily, social networking sites are allowing its users to send messages to those stereotyped email addresses.

So after looking at these artifacts (pun intended), I guess by now most of you have made up your mind who's going to survive. Actually that's why most of the Web email service providers are vying for big social networking websites likes Yahoo & Microsoft trying to buy Facebook etc. It's more like insulating themselves from Web 2.0 (i.e. user generated content) wave which is taking the whole world into it's grip.