Facebook announced Monday that it is building a full-fledged e-mail system into its 500-million-member-strong social network. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the new e-mail offering it says will be introduced over the next couple months to users.
Zuckerberg announced a unified messaging system that blends e-mail, Facebook messages, SMS, and chat into a "modern messaging service." Facebook's 500 million users will be able to get an @Facebook.com e-mail address that will allow them to communicate within and outside the Facebook network.
Now users won't have to leave Facebook to send e-mail to their friends, but rather click into a new e-mail link in Facebook to compose and send messages. The messaging offering has been created from the ground up and is not just an improvement of Facebook's existing limited Messaging system.
"We can do things that will help you see the e-mails that really matter on top. It's a similar algorithm used with the news feed to put the most important people and content on top," Zuckerberg says.
Facebook also announced a new iPhone app will be released to facilitate the new messaging service.
How it WorksThree core elements of the service are:
Seamless messaging - Ability to create a threaded conversation that contains multiple communication platforms including e-mail, instant messaging, and SMS. The history of the threaded conversation between two people is shared via e-mail. For example, if you communicate with someone via chat, SMS, and e-mail Facebook creates a history of that communication in one central place.
Conversation history - Communication between two parties is stored for archival purposes - if you choose to save them.
Social inbox - Facebook will attempt to create a hierarchical inboxes. One inbox will be based on your social relationships and will contain messages Facebook believes will be most important to you. A second e-mail inbox will contain messages that Facebook feels are less relevant to you.
Facebook representatives acknowledge that the service has limits. For example, if you use a instant messaging platform other than Facebooks, it will have no way of capturing that communication between two people.
Watch Out, GoogleThe move makes sense -- it's simply the latest volley in Facebook's war with Google to be the place where people spend most of their time on the Internet. Google currently owns this honor, but Facebook has proven that it's addictive service can hold people's attention for long periods of time. In terms of Internet advertising and marketing, this is extremely valuable.
Facebook is clearly trying to match all the services Google provides around its core search capability. Beyond its messaging capabilities, you can also already share links, photos, and video clips as well. There's an instant messaging chat tool. A partnership with Skype allows you to make voice calls from the platform; Google only recently added this capability to Gmail. E-mail is the piece that has been obviously missing, and now it is here.
We will be getting a look at the actual Facebook e-mail client later this morning, and will report back with more details. It is, however, expected that "vanity" Facebook URLs, like
www.facebook.com/scforum will turn into e-mail addresses, like scforum@facebook.com.
There is certain to be more privacy discussion around this move, as Facebook begins hosting our e-mail data at its servers. What new information from our e-mail will Facebook collect and add to our social graph? But it's the same old bargain: are you willing to give up a little more of your privacy in exchange for a free and convenient new service?
(PCW)
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Topic: @facebook.com - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces e-Mail service (Read 4107 times)
