n the coming months, AOL email users will be able to access their Facebook accounts or other Web sites through a special side panel created within AOL's Web mail service. AOL is also working to let its users personalize their accounts and connect with other users. For instance, when users hover their mouse over one of their buddies in an AIM instant messaging section of AOL email, data about the member will pop up. AOL is also making its email service accessible through social-networking sites and other Web pages so that users can preview and check messages without visiting AOL.com or its other email sites directly.
And Google Inc., which operates the Gmail email service and Orkut social network, is working on ways to tap into the social-networking wave, including through Gmail, say people familiar with the matter. One Google effort could involve analyzing the strength of Gmail users' connections with one another by tracking the frequency of their email and chat correspondence, these people say.
Google wants to provide outside Web developers with information about Google users' personal connections so that the developers can build Web-based services -- available via Google's personalized home page and possibly elsewhere -- that will make it easier for people to track their friends, these people say. Hypothetically, that could allow a Google user to see on her personalized home page a list of all the videos her friends have recently uploaded to YouTube or the public messages they have posted on Orkut. Eventually such features could be integrated into Gmail, too, these people say. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.
