Email still has plenty of juice left.

"Oh! I have so much data, I want to protect every bit of it and I want users to come to me everyday" said Social network sites when they gathered millions of users. For well known reasons social media world is keeping the tremendous amount of valuable data trapped within its arena. This is no secret to savvy users of all these different services. So we see initiatives like DataPortability and OpenSocial picking up good traction. Facebook, MySpace are doing this but taking careful steps as they have a lot tied with their data which they want to protect as much as they want. Users want their data to be portable and they want it quick. On the other end we have "email" which is loved my billions from its inception thru today and it is still not used very well in the context of social communication and messaging except basic notification service within every major social media sites.