Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, announced today that there would be an overhaul in the communication system of their social network. During his presentation in San Francisco, California, the young executive said that the new product, called Messages, will be able to integrate messages from various sources – such as email, instant messaging (i.e. MSN Messenger) and SMS text messages – in a single conversation that would be stored on the user history. It had been widely speculated that Facebook would launch an email system that would try to compete with Gmail (Google), Hotmail (Microsoft) and Yahoo Mail (Yahoo). Zuckerberg said that this was not the medium of the future and that he had no intention of stealing users from other services.
Not all people use the same type of media to hold a conversation. For example, some of your friends may use predominantly text messaging while others will use strictly email etc. The argument by Facebook is that the new features should allow the network to group registration fragments from various sources in a solid conversation, which can all be answered from Facebook. Also, one advantage to this integrated system will be the absence of spam, since only authorized contacts will be allowed to exchange information with the user. Messages from unknown people will be filtered by the system, called Social Inbox.
During the press conference, Zuckerberg said that messages sent by people without a profile on the network will also be stored in conversations by the system. This caused further discussions regarding Internet privacy, since these surfers have never opted to publish information within Facebook. The novelty is not yet available for all users. The company must issue a series of calls to specific groups in order to test the new features.
For an excellent summary of how this Facebook email system will work, please watch the brief video below which comes directly from Facebook.
