In ten years, an Internet eternity, web-based email has only made token improvements, moving from Hotmail to Gmail. Meanwhile, instant messaging and social networks have rapidly developed. Four new startups, all of which came out of secrecy this year, point toward <A HREF="http://venturebeat.com/2007/10/16/four-startups-ready-to-change-the-face-of-email/">a bright new future for email.</A> These oddly-named saviors--Fuser, Orgoo, Xobni and Xoopit--have a simple goal. They want to centralize communication, and they want to give it structure and meaning.

Power users feel the pain of having to repeatedly switch between email and the address book, having to close one email before writing another, or losing track of instant messages as they write a new email. For lighter email users, only once email begins to stack up and conversations become lost or forgotten do their cries for help begin. The least committed email users may have dropped it entirely in favor of messaging on a platform like Facebook, which seems to offer many of the same basic features.

The individual aims of these companies differ. Fuser and Orgoo both centralize communication, whether from email, instant messaging, a social network or even mobile SMS and video, in one simple interface. Xobni is an overlay for Outlook that helps organize high-volume communications with a multi-functional sidebar. Xoopit organizes all those thousands of pages of archived email, pulling out meaningful content long since lost by the user.