Gmail and Hotmail already have put into place or will be soon switching over to versions of a “priority inbox.” These services track user behavior, alerting marketers to what messages are considered important, which ones are read, and which ones receive replies. The comprehensive nature of the service is going to radically impact how people use email. These services are being put into place at the same time that a number of different developers and startups, including Xobni and Litmus, have showed a keen interest in parsing existing archival email data. It’s clear that the future will involve making greater use of information that’s already out there.
What remains to be seen is how these developments will ultimately impact overall communication habits. About 38.5 percent of people check their email on a mobile device such as an iPhone, making it imperative for emails to be formatted in a mobile-friendly way. However, many more people prefer to instant message or text message instead of communicating by email, making it a somewhat outdated form of communication. Will marketers start to try and target text messaging services in the same way?
The information age has bred both increasingly savvier marketers and consumers. What may happen is that email users either stop using “free” services like Gmail and Hotmail and start clamoring for private services that do not gather data and share it with marketers, or they may develop a distinction between personal and work communications.
The data harvesting and parsing that developers are performing may ultimately create an entirely new way of keeping track of information that will challenge conventional software. If the vast majority of information that is relevant to an individual is kept in its own particular archival storage system, the need for separate filing or tracking software may become irrelevant.
What will be interesting to see is if any developers start to create a second-tier filtering system that sorts all the email from free services like Gmail into a private account that is resistant to outside metrics. There may be money to be made from a service that allows people not only to organize all of their email related information, but to keep it private as well.