Monday will mark another step forward for Facebook.  The social network giant is looking to expand its communication hub even further by offering an email platform.  Expectations are that this could have a very large impact on Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail and other email systems.  The impact on email marketers has yet to be addressed, but it will certainly have an impact on the display marketing in current webmail providers as consumers make a switch to the Facebook platform.

With Facebook’s functionality already replacing traditional email services, it is likely the use of Facebook will grow as it offers an email platform. It will likely put its own twist on the typical webmail platform, however details remain to be seen.  A large concern over the privacy capabilities and policies of the company may hinder the popularity of such a service.

Stay tuned to see what the big announcement on Monday entails and how usable this email client is.

AOL came into this decade as an independent company, and it looks as though they will be leaving the decade solo. In recent news, AOL and Time Warner are “divorcing” and many are wondering how this will impact the internet veteran. AOL became famous as the big dial up internet company, and now they seem to have some challenges on their hands as they try to compete with other internet service providers.
Will there be a big challenge on their hand to get back in the internet “game”, or do they know what they are doing and will jump right back in game after the divorce from Time Warner?
We wish you luck in your new single life!

Do you ever wonder how the online experience will change over the years?  Well, to look forward, perhaps we should look backward.  Do you remember how you spent your time online just over a decade ago?  You probably started by firing up your modem, and going to your AOL account.  If you ventured away from AOL, you would use Internet Explorer (maybe Netscape) to explore a few sites. Remember, you were paying by the hour, so you didn’t stay online very long, and you were tying up a phone line.  Also, it took forever for pages to load, so it wasn’t very easy to move around.

Americans with internet access were spending less than 30 minutes a month online just 13 years ago.  Today, it is estimated that people spend over 27 hours a month online.  There was no Google, and YouTube was still years away.  The Web was completely different back then, and to predict what the future will look like is difficult.  The safe guess is that we will be spending more time online, but how will the experience change?