Facebook's New Message: Abandon Email, All Ye Who Enter Here
Posted by Sheila Shayon on November 15, 2010 05:00 PM
Struggling to juggle what feels like hundreds of messages you receive daily?
Facebook's new user messaging system combines SMS, IM, messaging from different channels, a history and a smart inbox that prioritizes and archives messages from Facebook friends. Messages is not e-mail – there’s no subject lines, no cc, no bcc. To send a message – just hit Enter.
Facebook's announcement states, “We modeled it more closely to chat and reduced the number of things you need to do to send a message. We wanted to make this more like a conversation.”
"This is a messaging service that includes email as one part of it," commented Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of his site's so-called "Gmail killer." Apparently, some 350 million people already use Facebook's internal (and somewhat clunky) message system to send 4 billion messages a day—outstripping the number of users joining the social network. Now, they can give a facebook.com address to non-Facebookers who wish to message them.
"Facebook has the opportunity to make email, or more importantly personal communication, very relevant again by categorizing communication by closeness - family, company, networks, etc. and combining all forms of online messaging," says Buddy Media CEO Mike Lazerow, whose New York-based firm creates Facebook marketing campaigns for brands.
"By creating seamless integration across chat, IM and email and making it easier to have conversations within the Facebook eco-system, Facebook will grow the number of daily interactions among its users well beyond 4 billion.”
Redefining e-mail to more closely resemble actual human conversation, Messages is organized around people and real-world, real-time chat. "It's only the beginning of what can be possible with the 'social inbox.' Facebook, plus email, plus mobile and messaging equals a major win for the company and users," adds Lazerow.
Facebook sees nothing short of the end of email addresses and, it hints, phone numbers: “Relatively soon, we'll probably all stop using arbitrary ten digit numbers and bizarre sequences of characters to contact each other. We will just select friends by name and be able to share with them instantly. We aren't there yet, but the changes today are a small first step.”
But with privacy still top of mind for most social networkers, are they ready to go all in and commit all their messaging to Facebook? It's a big chance that Mark Zuckerberg and his lieutentants, as they step up their war with Google, are willing to take.
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