Yahoo is trying to make its email service more relevant with tweets.
The company is expanding its “caller ID” feature, allowing you to hook up your contacts’ Twitter and LinkedIn profiles to contact cards, making them more data-rich. As a part of the integration with Twitter, Yahoo Mail will now be able to serve up recent tweets when you look up a contact in your mailbox.
Surfacing your friends’ tweets in your mailbox doesn’t really make sense. Twitter is very much a tool for in-the-moment conversations. Of course you can always look back on those digital interactions — it’s a live log. But, unless your friends only share news headlines, the new feature stands to take tweets out of context. An odd move for a tool that’s supposed to be adding more context.
The update is the latest in a long string of feature additions, like the ability to track packages and check flight information from your Yahoo Mail account. With these additions, Yahoo is trying to draw users in so they can access all their apps from one location.
It’s not a bad idea, but perhaps there are limits to what you need, or even want, in your inbox.
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