Gmail
From wsuwiki
This article does contain bias to a degree.
Contents |
Introduction
E-Mail's origin is not entirely clear, but it has a long history of facilitating communication via the internet. It's almost replaced many traditional means of communication, and has certainly seen an explosion of use over the past 50 years. Gmail is a modern service provided by Google that embraces most of the concepts that Tim O'Reilly outlined in his article defining Web 2.0. It's an email service that brought a lot of features together many email hosts didn't have at the time of its inception, and really pushed innovation concerning email forward.
Overview
Gmail's features, at least during its first few years, were beyond that of the comparable email services from Yahoo!, Hotmail, and other providers. With a full Gigabyte of storage, a sharp contrast to the 4 MB standard, Gmail gained some notoriety. Features previously unseen with email were integrated seamlessly: address auto-completion, conversation view, keyboard shortcuts, and real-time updating. It also had a much more complex spam filter that worked better than all of the competition's. Shortly thereafter, auto-save drafts, and a commitment to continually increase available storage were introduced.To date, over 7.5 GB are available for storage, a part of the "never delete again" philosophy that comes with Gmail. Combined with one of the most powerful and famous search engines on the web, accessing mail was easier than before. Ever since, competitors have been putting out similar services in order to remain competitive. Thus Gmail pushed forward what email really meant and forced the available email services to improve.
Communication facilitation
Communication is the ultimate goal of email. Of course it's changed over time to become a tool for advertising and a way to keep notified on recent news events. In the end, the standard consumer creating an email account desires to communicate, and Gmail facilitates that in a way email hasn't seen before. Conversation view bundles together replies from the same conversation so the full conversation can be viewed as one entry, ultimately making communication simpler and more intuitive. It's also one of the only email clients with a built in chat function that lets you have real-time conversations with fellow Gmail users. Labels offer a slightly new way to look at organization- allowing multiple labels per message was a new concept in email, so finding that specific message can be done a bit differently and more intuitive than before. All of these things facilitate communication better.
"Web 2.0"
Gmail embraces several of the Web 2.0 concepts O'Reilly detailed.
-Harnesses collective intelligence by using user input to mark messages as spam and prevent similar messages from reaching other users. -"Ends the software release cycle" by being constantly updated with new features and new tools rather than having distinct version releases. -Embraces lightweight programming models by made with AJAX- an example O'Reilly used. -Being accessible in mobile format makes it support software above the level of a single device. -It provides Rich User Experiences by having several tacked on programs like Chat, Video Chat, and Labs features, as well as real-time updating.
Furthermore, it's a product of one of the most-used examples of a Web 2.0 company, Google.
Free and the future of business
Gmail also abides by the "Gift Economy" idea Google has traditionally used. It offers all of these services free to anyone, generating its revenue instead through advertisements. To a degree, one could argue it employs the idea of Cross Subsidies as well, because it does offer its services free and has the option for users to purchase more space.
References
Buchheit, Paul (October, 2005) Guess What Just Turned 34?
Anderson, Chris (February 2008) Why $0.00 is the Future of Business
O'Reilly, Tim (September, 2005) What is Web 2.0?