Facebook’s ‘Email Killer’ is Facebook Messages – An All-In-One SMS, Chat, Message and Email Tool
By Anna Johnson on November 15th, 2010Facebook is rolling out a revamped version of its Facebook Messages application that will allow you to exchange messages with your Facebook friends in the form of SMS, chat, email or Facebook Messages, all from your Facebook account.
Whether you want to communicate via PC or mobile device, Messages will let you choose how to receive messages, communicate in real time, and do it all by simply choosing your Facebook friend’s name and typing in your message.
You’ll also get a @facebook email address that will let you email someone without having to type in a subject line, cc or bcc, etc. In addition, Messages will sort the @facebook emails you receive, with friends’ emails going into one folder and everything else going into an ‘Other’ folder.
All in all, Facebook Messages is intended to be an easy to use, all-in-one communications application to handle your online communications.
So… is Facebook Messages an email killer? Or, at least, a Gmail or Yahoo Mail killer?
To the extent that Facebook’s 500+ million users will prefer to communicate with friends via Facebook, then yes.
But for many people, having a Gmail, Yahoo Mail and/or other email addresses will still be useful. For business owners, having your own email address remains a must, especially for handling confidential discussions you don’t want to share with Facebook.
Which brings me to an important point: Facebook is in the business of selling information to advertisers. YOUR information.
That’s the quid pro quo you agree to when you sign up for a free Facebook account. Facebook gives you its platform for free; you let it sell the information you upload and exchange on your Facebook account to advertisers.
So… just as Google’s technology ‘reads’ the contents of emails sent and received via Gmail so that Google can target ads to you when you log-in to your Gmail account, you can bet that Facebook has the same idea in mind.
Bottom line: if you do not want your email – or other messages – to be available to Facebook or its advertisers, don’t use Facebook Messages. Or, at least, don’t use it for anything you want to keep confidential. For more information about Facebook Messages take the tour here.
