How would you define a media company? It’s difficult in this day and age, isn’t it? With new media on the scene, this process is even more of a challenge.

Hackers have gained the names and email addresses of millions of people who do business with a variety of companies, by way of third-party email marketing provider Epsilon. Epsilon claims to be the world’s largest permission-based email marketing provider, sending …

Goodmail Systems will shut down this month, according to Direct Marketing News, who reports that CEO Daniel Dreymann says the main reason is an acquisition attempt by an undisclosed Fortune 500 company was taken off the table. 

"We were on track to be acquired," Dreymann told the publication. "We got a terms sheet, and they left us at the altar at the last minute."

Most of you would probably agree that local is one of the biggest trends on the web these days, fueled by a variety of factors: increased mobile and smartphone usage, localized deals services (like Groupon), and of course search. Local is a major focus of Google right now, as evidenced by an increasing number of local results being returned for queries, as well as products like Google Places, Hotpot and Google Offers. 

Microsoft has some interesting news out for Hotmail users. The company has partnered with some other companies to bring a new kind of email to the inbox – one that is as up to date as possible, and lets users interact with sites from within the email itself.

A survey conducted at ad:tech by EPiServer has found that 60% of respondents are getting the highest return on investment from email marketing and company websites and blogs when compared to mobile and social channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. 

Several months ago, Google launched Gmail Priority Inbox. It was very well received. "Gmail has always been pretty good at filtering junk mail into the ‘spam’ folder," explained Google software engineer Doug Aberdeen upon the product’s release. "But today, in addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that isn’t outright junk but isn’t very important…" 

Rumor has it that Facebook will unveil its webmail product on Monday. That means look out Yahoo Mail. Look out Hotmail, and more interestingly in the grand scheme of things, look out Gmail. 

> Update: Read today’s article on the announcent of @facebook.com