Right before Facebook announced their new facebook.com e-mail (that’s not just e-mail) service, AOL Mail beat them to the punch by announcing their new version of AOL Mail, called “Project Phoenix.”
Now, I suppose it makes sense for AOL to try and stay in the e-mail business. After all, “You’ve Got Mail” was the quintessential e-mail alert of the 90s. But…we’re moving into the second decade out from that now. Has AOL created something worthy of this new technological era?
Well, think of Project Phoenix like Outlook. It’s an e-mail aggregate really. Yes, it has social media connectivity, in that you can update your channels directly from your inbox. But, Facebook’s new e-mail announcement looks to bring e-mail in within your existing social media channels themselves – where you already are. So, will Project Phoenix make AOL e-mail customers happy they’ve stuck with their original system for the past 20 years. Yes, definitely. Will it be enough to convince new people to make the jump over to AOL? Hardly.