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."
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.