In my post yesterday I suggested that Facebook may add email to their services. Today Mashable confirms “It is not email”.
Apparently this Facebook messaging system will be a more seamless, chat-like experience with a ‘social’ inbox. This would mean that the inbox will reflect the relationship you have with a sender or recipient of the email (I got that part right).
The system will run on multiple platforms, including phones.
I certainly hope it is not like Google Wave.
All is explained in this blog post from Facebook’s Joe Seligstein.
What I noticed:
- It is like a unified messaging system because it creates threads of conversations, indifferent if the messaging was done by text, email of Facebook writings.
- It will come with a ‘@facebook.com’ email alias.
- There is a reference to voice in the blog: “Relatively soon, we’ll probably all stop using arbitrary ten digit numbers and bizarre sequences of characters to contact each other.”
- They make a good point that the system should find out what the best way is to get a message to a person. Some may prefer email, others may prefer texting. By just entering the message, the system should figure out the delivery method.
- They make a point of not needing subject lines – messages are sorted by the people they got send to.
There is a good video explanation on the blog entry by Joe.
