MySpace Rolls Out a New Email Product in Beta

Email has been around as long as the Internet and, while it’s still being used by hundreds of millions of people and it's unlikely it will go away anytime soon, there are plenty who are ready to move on and there are also many who have little use for the service, especially the younger generations. So, with IM, social networking, Twitter and the host of collaboration tools and services and the upcoming "email-killer," Google Wave, some people would say that there isn't any room to grow in the sector.

But those people aren't working at MySpace – well, hardly anyone is these days after the massive layoffs – as the social network is launching a new email service. In a market dominated by Yahoo, followed by some of the biggest players in the IT world, Microsoft and Google, and at a time when it looks like you get a free email address for buying a pizza, a newcomer would have no chance of making any headway.

Unless, of course, that newcomer already had a considerable user base, which MySpace just so happens to have. An email service from the social network has been known to be in the works for a while now but it wasn't until today that the company announced it would roll out the product for all users. With almost 130 million users worldwide, a web email service from the social network would come in as the fourth largest email provider in the world and the second largest in the US. And with nearly 70 million unique visitors in the US, it would only be topped by Yahoo in traffic.

MySpace already has a powerful Messaging service set up to handle the internal communications between users and the new email service is built on top of it. The social network tries to make it stand out even more with some social features and some usability improvements. For starters, the Messaging service will be merged with the email service to provide a unified view of all your communications, at least those related to MySpace. Another social feature is the possibility to keep an eye on your friends' activities with the “Mail Activity Stream” module.

It comes with unlimited storage, which should really surprise no one these days, and you can send music and videos as attachments. A nice feature is the ability to embed photos from your desktop or your MySpace profile with just one click. The new service will be rolled out in beta for all users in the coming two weeks.