Mon, 15 Nov 2010
San Francisco - Facebook unveiled a new messaging system on Monday that will allow users to see all their various message feeds in one location and which ups the rivalry between the social networking site and Google.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the service as "modern messaging" and said it would combine email, instant messages, Facebook messages and SMS, as well as giving Facebook's 500 million members their own "@Facebook.com" email addresses.
The Facebook service will store all messages for five years and also provide a social inbox that will automatically differentiate messages from friends, business and mass mailings, he said.
Modelled more on chat programs than email, the Facebook messages won't have a subject line or the ability to cc or bcc recipients. However, users will be able to attach pictures and videos, and in the coming months will also integrate with Microsoft Office so that users will be able to see Word, Excel and Powerpoint attachments directly in Facebook.
"We have tried to make it so people don't have to think about this stuff," said Zuckerberg, who dismissed media speculation that the new service may drive people away from their existing email providers.
"This is not an email killer," Zuckerberg said. "This is a messaging service that has email as part of it."
The initial deployment started Monday for US members and will gradually rollout to all Facebook members over the course of a few months.
Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/353668,unmasks-new-messaging-system.html.
An Open Letter to Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan
9 years ago
Unified messaging is something that has been hacked at for decades. Good luck to Facebook, but the odds are they haven't solved it either. I'm sure they'll pick up 100m users just by default of their size however.
ReplyDeleteIt's not truly interoperable so it won't kill email, which continues to grow faster than Facebook. Ironically, if most Facebook users decide to turn on their Facebook email address, Facebook will never catch up to email.
ReplyDelete