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Yes, that’s Joel with a 40oz Budweiser.

As Facebook positions themselves as the ultimate identity and communication platform, they are planning to make some big moves soon… like building an email system. Why email? Well, it’s a logical addition to their platform since they have your real identity and all your contacts. Pictured left, is a screenshot of Facebook’s current messaging system (FYI, this is not real email). When they launch a real email system, this could potentially put a dent into other email services (like Gmail, Y! Mail, Aolmail, etc).

Why is there potential in Facebook email? Well, if you check out the AddThis Service Directory, you’ll notice the fastest growing trends are email services. Here are some numbers, based on the last 30 days of data:

Email App: Has grown 122% (pictured left)
AddThis Email: Is the 2nd most used service on the AddThis platform, just behind Facebook. It has grown 5.09%.
Y! Mail: Has grown 21.46%
Gmail: Has grown 56.35%
Hotmail: Has grown 21.26%
AOL Mail: Has grown 11.3%

When you combine all the numbers and consider the growth, there’s no question that email is one of the most popular ways to share. Everyone can email, even your mom. On the other hand, she’d have to be really savvy to communicate and share on Twitter. This is why Facebook email has huge potential—everyone, including your mom, will be able to use Facebook to message back and forth with their friends. By moving into the email space, Facebook can collect more data and retarget you and your friends with their ads. That’s money in the bank. So, how much data will they have?

As it is today, Facebook makes up nearly 1/3 of all the sharing on the AddThis platform. If you combined Facebook + Facebook Email, they could potentially command a larger portion of sharing. From the perspective of AddThis, Facebook could collect even more data and traffic. So there’s probably some big money there.

I was playing around with our site, and I came across an old blog from 2007 talking about Facebook and it’s growth. It sounds kind of silly now, but 2 years ago, no-one would have known Facebook would be the largest social network ever. Well, actually, we knew about Facebook’s growth because of our data… but we only published our insights in blog posts. Now we have a new Service Directory that can show social network trends like you’ve never seen them before.

In October 2007, Facebook was part of the long tail services used to share with on AddThis. This graph doesn’t include Email, but at the time I believe Email was the #1 sharing service used. Since then, Facebook has grown from 9% to 31%—Facebook makes up nearly 1/3 of the sharing on the AddThis platform. It has simply been the fastest growing service in the last two years.

This is a snapshot of the new Service Directory Trends from February 2010. Is there anything that can beat Facebook, or have they grown to far and too fast for any other social network to keep up with? Obviously, there’s a home for special niche social networks like Orkut in Brazil (the #1 social network there), but is there anything in the horizon that can even come close? Twitter has grown, but it’s on lower growth trajectory.

What will you predict will happen in the next 2 years? Check out addthis.com/services and share your own insights. If you were to start your own social network, how would you compete with the big boys/girls?

Want to know how Facebook is doing versus Twitter? How about Instapaper vs Read It Later? Or Gmail versus YahooMail? We’ve revised the AddThis Service Directory. Now you can understand how people are sharing the world is sharing content with the AddThis platform. With over 650 million unique users per month, this Service Directory gives you a cross section of what’s trending up and down in the world of sharing.

Trends

All Services

Compare Services

Countries

Kudos to the web team for standing this one up. This one is a personal baby of mine—it was a project I got to run with, design, and bring a lot of ideas to. Admittedly, I borrowed a lot of thinking from Google Finance when designing it. I wanted our data to feel precise, up-to-date, and unbiased. I also wanted to make the data a little more visual, by using spark lines to help compare services quickly and show trending. Originally we didn’t show downward trends… and I felt like this was only showing half the picture. I also wanted to bring in more ways of carving the data in interesting ways. I worked with Jim to design “comparing services”, which allows you to compare up to 3 services side by side.

Anyway, I’m really excited about the new service directory. I’m really impressed by what our team can do. As a unit, I feel like we can accomplish anything.

I used to be in shape about 2.5 years ago before I moved to DC. When I took on my job with a startup, I knew that I wouldn’t have time for to practice Jiujitsu. It was a sacrifice I was prepared for. It was worth it—the work I’ve been doing for Clearspring and AddThis is phenomenal, and I wouldn’t trade anything for it. Unfortunately, I’ve been eating unhealthy, and haven’t been working out consistently… and it’s time to change that.

Annie sent me a pic of me over IM tonight… this is a photo of me back when I was doing brazilian jiujitsu. I remember that evening, it was Yawen’s and Meiku’s party… and they had tons of pizza, and I remember declining. I’m not saying I was ripped, but I was in good shape, I ate healthy, and was I walking at 165lbs tournament ready. Anyway, this photo inspired me to hit the gym this evening, and start getting back in shape. I was planning to start BJJ again this month, but a series of unplanned events have occurred, which have delayed things. In the mean time my goal is to follow my old set of simple dieting rules:

1. No more junk food (chips, fast food, popcorn, chocolate, etc).
2. No more soda, period.
3. No more carbs or sugar after 7pm.

I’m hoping to carve out an hour each day for working out as well. This should put me on the right path. Let me know if you guys know any good BJJ schools around here that are relatively cheap or free? I’d really like to find a way to train again in the near future.