Every time I sign up for a social network it scours my mail services (Google, Yahoo) for address and then matches them up with people already on the network. It's a clever way to grow interest and traffic quickly.
However, I've often wondered why the owners of the Inbox don't just create social networks since those email addresses seem to be the most important part of growing the network.
It seems Google and Yahoo have wondered the same thing. From Saul Hansell at the New York Times:
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.
More:
Yahoo Mail will also be extended to display other information about your friends as well. This can be a link to a profile page, and also what Yahoo calls “vitality” –- updated information much like the news feed on Facebook. There could also be simple features that are common on social networks, like displaying a list of friends whose birthdays are coming up.
“The exciting part is that a lot of this information already exists on our network, but it’s dormant,” Mr. (Brad) Garlinghouse said.
Full posting here.
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