Email remains number one user activity on Internet. Despite new technologies keep rolling out everyday, predominantly we use email for business and marketing communications. As a marketer, email means more than a messaging tool. It is a user engagement vehicle.

I know a lot of people have a default view of inbox sorted by date or sender. If your email is organized by message thread, you might unlock the hidden value. Recently a new initiative called “Social Email Graph,” a.k.a. SEG, has brought up a new perspective of using email.

The idea of Social Email Graph is still a theory at the moment. But it has a clear distinction. A typical example is your inbox of Facebook. All the communications are seen as threads. The ownership of a message thread usually belongs to two persons in a single discourse. When you compose a message on Facebook, there is no forward feature. It keeps the communication from branching out without the consent of a trusted network. If you want to forward or copy a message, you have to establish a social connection first. And that would be to invite the message recipient to join your social network. You then begin to build intimacy along with the reciprocity.

We all know the power of social networks is the meta data. The analysis of the behavioral patterns and preferences can now be added with the statistics of replies, ignored messages, and the traces of the difference and similarity between the sender and recipient’s profiles. The social graph presents a very powerful information grid.

A company called “Xobni” has a solution which does email more than messaging. It helps you to build social network from everyday email conversations. If you want to know more about the concept of social graph, here is a clip of the panel discussion at the Social Graphing Patterns Conference. Take a look and get inspired.

 Subscribe my feed