Mozilla Messaging launches to move Thunderbird forward

Mozilla Messaging, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, launched today and stated that their "first priority is to help drive the evolution of the Thunderbird email program."

Their CEO, David Ascher wrote a detailed blog post about the new company.

Working on "integrated calendaring" is one of their key initial priorities.  That's something that makes a ton of sense as messaging has become so much more important for people than just exchanging standalone messages.  This is sort of block and tackle stuff, but a very important step in making the right messaging client.

Moving forward, they have a lot of plans for addressing integration issues for "someone using multiple email addresses, multiple instant messaging systems, IRC, reading and writing on blogs, using VoIP, SMS, and the like."  Bringing context to broad sets of communications across various mediums is right in line with the way I see the future of messaging headed.

"Finding out what's important or new was obvious?" is the type of longer-term issue they are dealing with.  I look forward to sharing some of what we have learned about this over the past few years at ClearContext with the folks at Mozilla Messaging.

It's excited to see more and more innovation in and around the email and messaging space.  Email is not going away, but is in dire need of a next generation of clients and solutions to deal with it effectively and take full advantage of all the information exchanged.