If facebook can really deliver a rock solid web mail client, I think they will really be a company to watch in the rest of 1996 and 1997. If they play their cards right they may get snapped up by an industry powerhouse like yahoo or excite@home for eight figures.
back in that era all of the successful players - you know, the REALLY successful players like Yahoo, Microsoft and Excite (!) had web-mail clients that were basically startups they acquired.
It was only Google that really built a killer web-mail client from scratch in-house.
We would need to establish a bona fide intent to use it for commerce, although it does seem like there's a strong market for facebook hating...
On a semi-related note, the reasoning for that is actually quite interesting - the justification stems from the congressional power to regulate commerce between states.
I will be really interested to see this, because as it stands Facebook's messaging interface is barely any better than 2001's Hotmail (you do get a pretty picture with address autocomplete though).
Going from where they are now to anywhere close to being a 'Gmail killer' is a humongous step.
I hear their legal strategy is: "If you invented facemail you would have invented facemail." followed by writing a cheque for a tenth of what they just raised.
"killer" is journalistic shorthand for "rival", they just want the conflict and the attendant pageviews, they don't care who wins or who is likely to win.
Or if there is even a winner. Sometimes people forget that companies compete with each other and we don't all use the same products from the same companies.
Actually, I think the starkness of Facebook's messaging UI is its greatest strength. If they can somehow make real email as simple as that, abstracting away all the decades-old cruft of email that Gmail only partially abstracts away, it will be quite a formidable entry.
Add a script that allows non-technical users to log into their Gmail account and set up a redirect... and things could get very interesting.
I've always thought that Facebook could make a real difference by becoming a central hub to control your "persona" or identity so to speak. Facebook could integrate with every other service and app under the sun, and users would not require to input information (any more then their Facebook uri) to register for anything.
Instead they're trying to undercut Google by keeping them out of the 'shared data' agreement and now they're going into... e-mail and messaging? I'd rather they work on improving Facebook Connect and give me a way to control my data (and usable privacy controls while we're at it). I sure as hell don't want my personal email (and even less any business or corporate email) going through Facebook. Hell I have a hard time accepting Gmail, though it's so convenient I compromise.
Lots of people say that Facebook won't go the way of MySpace. But you know what? Lots of people said the same thing about MySpace too. Everyday I see or hear more and more about people I know just not using their accounts anymore and in some cases actually deleting them; even I don't get much value from it either this days.
I think Facebook is losing direction and just trying to wow users with amazing features that no one really needs. They need to focusing on making what they have better, not adding features and avoiding integration with other services.
> Facebook could integrate with every other service and app under the sun, and users would not require to input information (any more then their Facebook uri) to register for anything.
Facebook has done exactly this, and there's been quite a bit of backlash, with some discussion on this site itself.
Facebook Connect has a long way from being the "identity manager" I speak of, and it's integration with applications as it is now leaves a lot to be desired. There has been backslash because 1) it's a mediocre implementation and 2) the lack of openness on behalf of Facebook and their methods are not in the best interest of either the users or the applications that could use this system.
Facebook could have become the central hub in which you can manage your identity (in an open way of course). Facebook could allow you to easily do anything on the web with fewer clicks by means of integration with other sevices. Instead they rather have you locked in to using their services and implementations and that is what I don't agree on. I wished it followed what I want, but whatever they do I wish it was adding value to the experience instead of just creating a more locked in ecosystem.
I've long wondered why Amazon doesn't have a authentication service, like Facebook and Twitter. Seems like it would be really useful for startups based on EC2.
I think Facebook has much much bigger goals than silly gmail killing. It's trying to become the internet for all those who don't know the difference between a browser, web site and the internet. Offering email services is just a small step in that direction.
A lot of people compare Facebook to MySpace, but isn't AOL also a good comparison?
Remember all the companies that were AOL keywords. Now they have Facebook pages. AOL has a messenger, now Facebook does. It just strikes me as AOL for the 21st century.
So the interesting question to me is, after learning about the history of AOL, why would Facebook want to pursue what on surface seems like a similar strategy.
What's different this time with Facebook? And are the threats to its growth, success and longevity in principle the same as AOL's.
I wonder, then, if they'll ever enter into web search. It would make sense, given the seeming herd migration of engineers from Google (though I don't know how many were from Search).
You can already purchase Facebook credits for games and the like. It's just a matter of time before they transition that into something with a wider reach.
Not familiar with those....are they interchangeable for money?
I'd like to be able to easily send $5 to a friend via facebook, or 25 cents to the author of a blog post I enjoyed. Others have tried the micropayments, but it needs a heavyweight to really pull it off. Maybe facebook can buy a startup that has it nicely figured out technically, but can't get traction.
You buy them with real money, and can spend them within applications on Facebook. It's not usable for anything outside of Facebook, or directly sending stuff to your friends.
But it's still the beginnings of an entry into the market.
Obvious sarcasm, and I agree. Facebook has become synonymous with insecurity, poor privacy, and scams. Why anyone would trust them with personal info is beyond me.
It's not that I completely trust google either, but they do seem to have a better track record of having their users interests in mind.
My understanding of that was that the individual in question (was there more than one person?) clicked through confirmation screens without looking at them, assuming that everything would be okay. It is not Google's fault when users are idiots.
However, I may be wrong; I only recall one instance of this happening with Buzz, and may simply have missed other ones.
Other times when google violated privacy which I remember: 1) Accidentally logging packets, which they then told people about and found a good way to delete, instead of just pretending it didn't happen. 2) Releasing emails (and other information?) to governments when required to do so by law, which I consider a valid excuse.
The problem, at least right at launch, was not that users were idiots, it was that the confirmation screens that they did read were misleading. The confirmation screen said words whose obvious interpretation was "click here not to use Buzz," but the real meaning was "click here not to further configure Buzz." Users, even non-idiot ones, would be quite reasonable to assume that clicking that button would either deactivate Buzz or never have it become active in the first place, when in fact that button left Buzz running in its default state of sharing personal information with a bunch of people. Actual deactivation was hidden behind a bunch of config menus.
Google is not evil by nature (though i have my own doubts) and Facebook is also not evil by nature. Facebook simply has a different philosophy on _sharing_. They believe that people should share everything and be more social. If this is not something people are not comfortable with, then those people have no business in signing up for facebook and complaining that everything is shared by default.
As far as Google's privacy 'glitches' are concerned, in my experience bugs make it into production accidentally. But pieces of code that are developed specifically to sample wifi packets that might contain sensitive data or code that exposes all my email contacts to the entire world do not make into production accidentally.
Both are semi-evil towards end-users by virtue of these end-users being the product, rather than the customers they imagine themselves to be.
Google tries to reach the unevil side, by giving you as full control of your data as they can, and not cross over the creepy line (although they are always near it).
Facebook doesn't, and therefore finds itself on the evil side almost all the time. It's not that they want to be evil that makes them evil; It's just that not avoiding becoming evil makes them that way, and they do not try to avoid it in any way. (Plus, evil is more lucrative).
When you say "intentionally" are you referring to the recent UID leaks? If anything Facebook is doing more to protect user privacy now with their "no exporting your friends email" policies.
If @facebook.com email addresses have a stronger link to real, non-spammy, non-mass-produced identities than other domains, they could become preferred at many other sites -- a broader version of Facebook Connect.
Tangent to your point: I suppose @facebook.com will be reserved for employees/contractors only. The Facebook users will probably get either @fbmail.com or @fmail.com.
If I were FB, I'd go with the latter, just so that I can say, "Fmail - it's one better than Gmail!"
Of course, that opens up a whole raft of other issues, not the least of which is F being right next to G (on my US QWERTY keyboard), so folks keying in an address might typo and send emails to the wrong service and/or person.
Not sure why you think that, Facebook has always stressed one, real identity. If your facebook URL is facebook.com/john.smith, why should your email not be john.smith@facebook.com? Is there a compelling reason? What would be the difference if john.smith became an employee of facebook?
Public profiles are indexed. Knowing the URL would then give you their fb email if it was also based on the same handle (which is certainly the most user friendly). Meaning facebook email will be hammered with spam. It'll be interesting to see what they go with.
Interesting... Not just that, it will be trivial to target spam directly at people and depending on the visibility of their profile, target it based on their public data.
If I were FB, I'd go with the latter, just so that I can say, "Fmail - it's one better than Gmail!"
Your view is exactly opposite from mine. I viewed it as higher is better (where A is 1 - or 0 if you're binarily inclined). You have regular email, and Google's GMail is two higher.
Facebook using FMail, to me, feels a bit like saying "it's better than plain Jane email, but still not quite as good as GMail."
1) Facebook can build a simple API which, given an email, tells you the trust rating of that person. "To sign up to this service you need a Facebook trust rating of 10 or more" <- no spammers on the service.
2) Emails from facebook can include the trust rating too.
How to get the trust rating? That's exactly what social networks are: networks of trust. Pick some obvious trustworthy nodes to start, expand from there with diminishing trust as you get further away, increasing trust the more connections there are to someone who's trustworthy, and so on... there's probably a zillion great algorithms to calculate this.
Solving the problem of trust would basically solve the problem of identity, since identity (in real life as well as online) is a product of a trust network.
> Facebook can build a simple API which, given an email, tells you the trust rating of that person.
That's, in general, a really good idea. Trouble is; it is something that Google could trivially offer as well (in fact, they have even more metric data to work with).
And the bigger problem is that you'd need to introduce it as a global standard so that email servers and clients would recognize it.
> Emails from facebook can include the trust rating too.
Sadly, that's easily spoofed :)
The problem of trust online is the fundamental "flaw" in the internet (and the reason spam can exist in such a massive form). The person that solves this in a manageable and global way will be printing money.
Actually - it's not. To interact with other users in a significant way they have CAPTCHAS to fill out - unless you confirm your account via a mobile phone SMS (which can only be used 1-to-1).
Yes! It may be easy to spoof outside of Facebook, but internally FB routes it's own emails, so when you use Titan to read a message from another Titan email address, Facebook can show you thatbit's genuine,
Spammers can create shell accounts, but they can't friend you, so when you receive email from someone you don't know, Facebook can shown you their friends list and public profile, or use that to prioritize your inbox.
Soo... basically whitelisting functionality. Something that we've had for a long time. Only this is automatic since people are (hopefully) more diligent about their Facebook friends list than their Gmail/Hotmail/Outlook address book.
That's my SWAG, although you can go a little further than your friends list given a social graph. You can score an email based on all sorts of social data. Are you friends? Friends of a common friend? Do you have "likes" in common? Do you belong to common groups? Have you commented on the same thing? And so on.
Any large email player can do some of the same things with a history of emails, but FB could (I am only guessing) do interesting things.
Whitelisting is one approach to the spam problem. Inbox prioritization is an interesting problem as well. Once we have emails in your message box, you could log into FB and find 100 or more emails even after filtering for spam. So... Which emails should appear on your home page and which should wait quietly in your inbox for you to take action?
And so Facebook offers a switch: "only accept mail from friends and sites I've liked".
If you've got a popular walled garden, making the jungle outside even scarier, and thus forcing a stronger commitment to the tended 'inside', can be good business.
Although this is already the case with Google Profiles - the url is the same as your gmail account name unless you opt out/change it (most people don't)... yet google handles the spam well.
The interface'll have the be unbelievably amazing and innovative for this to even make a dent in people's minds. And as others have pointed out, Facebook.com is not associated with professionalism (unless you're a recruiter or tech blogger or something).
All in all, I think nobody will care at the end of the day.
> The interface'll have the be unbelievably amazing and innovative for this to even make a dent in people's minds
I guarantee you that they are going to become the default address between people 16 and under. My brother is 16 and doesn't have an email address, but he does have a facebook account.
1: My daughter just moved into her own house today.
2: Wow, awesome! I should call them to congratulate her! Whats the new house number?
1: Oh, she doesn't have a landline, she just uses her cell phone.
2: That's the scariest thing I've heard so far today.
1: ???...
To the newest generations email is an antiquated technology that has no real use among their peers. Eventually they might get some email address for college/professional use, but that's practically akin to a fresh college grad now getting a fax machine because "its what we use at the office".
Not shocking.
Edit: Unless by "the scariest thing" you mean the idea of xyz@facebook.com becoming the default for the >17 crowd, in which case, disregard my nonsense.
I think your comparisons are completely wrong. Is there anything you could do with land lines that you cannot do with mobile phones? No, but there are lots of things email does that Facebook does not do (and vice versa).
Send/receive faxes to/from a dedicated fax amchine, use an analog modem or coupler, connect multiple extensions to the same line, connect an Asterisk box, play DTMF tones into the receiver and have it dial, pulse dial by toggling the 'hang-up' switch...
What's especially strange about this tend is how something like gmail blows facebook messaging away in terms of UX.
A lot of users though seem to have made Facebook their web world and are willing to accept a crappier messaging system for the convenience.
And it's not early adopters making the switch. I've been using FB for well over 6 years, but I still prefer to send an email over an fb message. Most of my friends are the same.
I may be being slow on the uptake not to have spotted this before, but it hit me last week -
99% of my personal mail - both email and physical mail - is either companies sending out notices (adverts, bills, whatever...) or websites I subscribe to telling me there's something I should see. Direct personal communication has very largely shifted off the platform.
Interestingly, that doesn't yet seem to be the case for corporate communication (into which I include somem voluntary work I do). I still send and receive plenty of email on that account, but this has me wondering for how much longer....
And Facebook basically still has those things that are the non-personal emails, they just took them out of the mail stream and put them into your wall.
Cut that crap out. That's why people hate email. It is trivial in almost all cases nowadays to get off of those sorts of lists.
Today I have gotten emails: interview info from MS, an announcement as to why the University's power went out, payroll setup info for my Uni, tech advice from a startup friend, and an email from my TA about my lab today.
None of that would have been visible/accessible or possible to communicate to me through anything besides email.
Actually, that _is_ pruned. I'm only getting the notices I want / need for various reasons, not the spam, and do periodically dump senders who aren't interesting any more. Yet I still end up with eMail as overwhelmingly a commercial medium.
This is very true. I'm 20 and I've never used my personal email regularly and I'm sure most of my friends haven't either. We've always used MSN or AIM and more recently Facebook to keep in touch.
I'm a 30-somthing urban professional and almost no one I know still uses MSN or AIM. Tons of people use gchat and gmail, including people who used facebook first. Looking at my adium contacts right now, there are more people signed into gchat than facebook chat, only one signed into MSN and AIM.
My wife's friends are the same way. Sure, lots of them have facebook accounts, but all of her friends and business contacts, new and old, email and gchat regularly. She doesn't even have a facebook account yet and has no intention of ever setting one up.
In fact, I feel less pressure to use facebook these days than I did a year or two ago. I don't even go on it anymore other than when I'm working on apps that use the graph api. My wall is filled with stuff I don't care about and if I want to contact someone I email, chat or text them.
But at least here in the US, every incoming first year student at a university in college has to have an email, and receives multiple emails per day from professors, administrators, etc. Email is still a huge part of the current college infrastructure, that could change, but I don't see it happening overnight.
I still email occasionally but only when necessary. That's why I said I'm not a regularly user. My point is that I've never used email for friend to friend communication.
In my opinion, this is one of the most interesting questions on here. Facebook's default method of identification is and always has been (since thefacebook.com times) an email address.
If they are launching their own email client, it will be silly for them to require you to provide them with another email address in order to use their site. How will they authenticate people? Or they won't and there will be a ton of spambots with facebook accounts. Either way, I think it's an interesting question and I'll be interested to see their solution.
He'll have an email address by the time he gets to college. There are still plenty of people who'd prefer to keep their personal and collegiate/professional lives separate.
I doubt it. Most schools block Facebook, whereas most do not block Gmail (many rely on Gmail themselves). Using a Facebook email is just asking for accessibility problems.
Initially you needed a .edu email to register. Then they opened facebook to everyone (any email). Now you don't you need an email address to register? Or did your brother used a throw-away email (gmail?) account?
Despite my occasional pleas, it's already the messaging service of choice between my friends and friends-of-friends. They say it's easier to add people to a discussion, and it's hard to fight the momentum.
Wasn't facebook's justification for not letting you export your friends' email adresses because they weren't an email application? Now that Facebook does email, will they allow an email export?
The sad thing is that facebook itself is already somewhat of a "Gmail killer." I have a ton of people that will only contact me through facebook. When I ask why they don't use email they usually don't have an answer. The ones that do mumble something about convenience.
I have NO ONE who prefers facebook to email. Then again I'm not a very social person online. I use the Internet primarily for research (self-education, it's like a huge free library on my desk) ... and for business, and business users certainly do not rely on facebook for online communication. I doubt they ever will.
I see this as a good thing. As others have mentioned here, FB messaging is more popular than email for a lot of people. This means I'll be able to communicate effectively with my friends who check their FB an order of magnitude more than their email (almost all of them,) using SMTP in any way that I choose rather than having to log into FB with all its attendant awfulness.
How does this news represent anything other than FB rewriting its inbox/messaging tool to operate over SMTP/IMAP? And how can that be anything but good? Okay we all wish they'd used the Wave Federation Protocol, but we can't have everything we want.
Personally I really don't want my email visible to Facebook. What would they do with my information? Google already set the precedent for leveraging email data _somehow_. If so, Facebook will probably push the boundaries while carefully marketing it so that users accept something they would not have just previously. I only have a problem with this because they're profiting from data that users would not have allowed them to sell to advertisers if they had known about the terms when signing up. So it's like a bait and switch and that makes me distrust them.
I think an interesting case here that will be affected here is how social circles were dealing that one stubborn Facebook holdout.
Before, there were two choices. Either move communication to email, or leave them out of the loop. Now the choice is easy, and it will all happen within Facebook.
Does anyone have any decent info on which free mail service is the most popular? I know a fair amount of people use any mixture of hotmail, gmail and yahoo. Perhaps 'killing gmail' isn't as big as killing hotmail/live/badabingmail.
I'd be very interested to see stats on this, but my money is on yahoo.
Despite their decline in the US and Europe, they are massively dominant in Asia in search, shopping and mail.
Everything devolves till eventually it can check email. [someone more intelligent than me will find the source of that quote... I'm having a tough morning.]
This should actually mean I don't need to visit facebook.com anymore if there is indeed POP3 or IMAP access, because (presumably) they will send full messages to Titan rather than the current "you have a new message NOW CLICK ME", and POP3 access to Titan means that I can get Facebook messaging through GMail.
The catch is probably going to be a lack of SMTP...
How long till we see cellphones (not the purported FB phone) utilize just one source for your contacts? I just got a WP7 phone and had to merge all my contacts in from multiple sources, if instead MS just piggybacked off FB only, it would make things far easier for the end user. Also FB could claim "portability" to some degree (even if just with their partner MS)
Even if the thing turns out to be unbelievably amazing, I doubt companies would like people to be constantly logged in to facebook "for mail" during work. For many offices, a browser tab on facebook could just imply chit-chat with friends, farmville, and many other unproductive pursuits. How could it be a "Gmail Killer" with such a born defect?
Are there any for-pay gmail-like mail services out there offered by companies who aren't trying to make money by selling their users to their advertisers?
I use gnus at the moment, but it's starting to feel a bit long in the tooth. On the other hand, the thought of having all my email in a marketer's database kind of squicks me.
it seems convenient within Facebook
but I would not like using a @facebook.com
email address for serious communication.
Imagine applying for college with such an address.
In a professional image scale I would definitively rank facebook.com less professional than gmail.com but maybe slightly better than WorlOfWarcraft.com
Is this the 2010 equivalent of wearing a jacket and tie? It seems we worked to escape the idea that conformity to arbitrary behaviours was more important than merit, only to replace them with a fresh set of meaningless distinctions.
yes and we'll now be the generation who cannot seem to reconcile themselves with the newer and supposedly more meaningless distinctions until the next ones come along.
For most professional use, meaning "work", I use work's e-mail system (usually based on Exchange, but I guess that depends on where you work). If I apply to companies, do you think they really care what your address is?
I do some of the interviewing duties at work, and I can tell you my eyes pretty much skip over the e-mail part of the resume. HR needs it to e-mail them "your interview is on the 10/10 at 10:10am", but I doubt the HR person really cares about the address beyond copy'n'pasting it.
(Mind you, if I got work e-mail from a personal address, I would regard this as unprofessional behavior, but it doesn't matter if it's @gmail.com or @faceboook.com)
Hi, one quick question: If you use @jdoe.net because it looks more professional, what would you use for the local part of the address? Does e.g. contact@jdoe.net look better than jdoe@gmail.com? I'm thinking when used for job applications and such.
john@jdoe.net is what I'd use, or if you have an uncommon last name like me and it's available as a domain name, john@doe.net and a blog at john.doe.net.
At the risk of sounding flippant: So? Isn't your public facing Facebook profile picture easily discoverable anyway? If you're submitting, for example, a college application, they already have way more information on you anyway. The same goes for a job application.
don't you think people would google you anyway? that's the first thing i do when i receive an email from someone i don't know or a possible client. well at least before i started using rapportive.
I usually try to stop myself being overly protective of privacy. But - I already thought about leaving GMail several times to make sure that I don't rely on a big company that knows a lot about me.
Now Facebook, that would be an alternative. Uhm - wait a minute!
I do think they're going to pull this off though. Lots of people I know are still (happily) using the "older" services around, local free email providers, hotmail, whatever.
A sexy webmail client, promoted by the site they use heavily? Sounds like a dealbreaker. Lots of non-technical people don't know Google as something other than a field to type searches into (or even rely on the browser search fields). Facebook could "educate" those to switch quite easily, I guess, given a good marketing strategy and some neat "integrate your mails with your status updates" features.
If Twitter is smart they will provide the smart ultra cheap fast answer:
mailto:username@twitter.com
with automatic forwarding to your actual email (that they know of already).
No brainer.
I hope that facebook users will use their twitter name to setup their facebook email adress, ie: use it as a very public address.
Don't you guys think that it makes much more sense for Facebook to allow their users to hook up their email accounts (GMail, Hotmail etc.) via IMAP/POP and just be much better email interface with some extras?
Facebook could give priority sorting (based on your social graph), instant identification (kind of Rapportive features), and really easy to use and powerful address book (your social graph).
Now Facebook will have no excuse not to allow exporting of friends email address... well they will probably think of something else.
I doubt they could kill GMail, if there is one thing Google is good at is, fast and efficient interfaces, it may not be pretty, but who cares, it's an email client.
Google try to integrate social network with gmail (buzz) and failed.
Now facebook is trying to integrate social network with mail and result would be fail IMHO.
I wonder if this has to do with the recent back-and-forth antics between Facebook and Google. It would make sense that Facebook wants a way for people to get their contacts out of Gmail...
O no, please! Why do they all have to turn into I-completely-want-to-own-your-Internet-life giants? Isn't doing one thing good enough, enough? Who needs yet another email service provider?
Another address people will just forward to their gmail. The article claims facebook has "the most popular photos product"... it may be true, but their "photos product" is shit.
I don't have a facebook account but idk about this. Will users get another username for their email address or use their vanity usernames? The under 18 crowd will use it because like another poster brought up, my brother also doesn't have a email address. He tried using mine.
Well, didn't they buy Drop.io? So obviously they're going after our emails. The interesting thing would be to see if they require people to adopt new email addresses or not
Maybe I'm biased by having seen The Social Network, but does anyone else get the feeling that Facebook is motivated by hurting other people? I mean, when Google was starting to get big, it seemed like they were driven by their own creativity, by their drive to be awesome. But Facebook just always exudes this attitude of jealousy.
edit: Any of the downvoters care to explain? It's an honest question about two different companies - if you disagree, I'd like to hear what you think.
It's just business. They'll do what it takes to get new users and to keep them. The reason they will be giving away @facebook.com email addresses is the same reason why my mother in law won't get off AOL. She doesn't want to lose her email address.
Yeah - I get that, but unless I've just been spared from the darker side of business, I've never worked for a company that would have called something "The X Killer" internally. People are aware of their competitors and what they need to do to beat them, but it seems like an unusual focus to focus on "killing" someone else product than coming up with something customers want even more.
