by Lior Levin from Iadvize
Though Facebook’s recent newly messaging system was, prior to its announcement, hyped up to be a Gmail killer or even an Email killer, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was quick to dismiss the rumors of email’s demise.
“This is not an email killer. This is a messaging experience that includes email as one part of it,” Zuckerberg said.
Instead, Zuckerberg said that his Facebook Messaging System is designed to work with email while still offering an easier, faster and better-organized way to communicate.
According to Zuckerberg, it won’t be Facebook that kills email, if it does die, but rather the friction inherent in modern email that he is hoping to eliminate.
To do this, Facebook has several powerful new features and ideas that it hopes can revolutionize the way we communicate on the Web.
Tapping the Social Graph
With over 500 million active users, Facebook has perhaps the best picture of who your friends are and who your friends’ friends are. By knowing who you know, Facebook can easily prioritize all communications that you get, whether it’s from within Facebook, via email or IM.
Facebook can then take this information and organize it into different tiers, similar to what Gmail currently does with its Priority Inbox feature. These tiers include a spam folder, which is kept away from sight, a “normal” folder that is made up of messages that aren’t spam but aren’t important and an “important” folder that is made up of your friends and people you designate as critical.
Another interesting change is the removal of all subject lines in the communication and all segregation between communication formats. Facebook’s new messaging service will track all conversations you have with a person, whether by Email, IM or internal messenger, under the person’s name.
The user can choose the appropriate method of response based on the individual and the message, but all of the actual communication will appear in the same place.
Is Email in Trouble?
The be sure, Facebook has a lot of weight to throw around in this area. With a user base much larger than any of the major email providers, the potential for Facebook to shape online communication is very clear.
That being said, where Facebook might be able to make inroads in personal communication, an area where the “friction” Zuckerberg talks about is a serious issue, it is less likely to make similar inroads into business, where much of the email usage is taking place.
In business, the “friction” is part of what makes email so appealing. Subject lines, different conversations with the same people and other elements Facebook is seeking to remove are part of what makes email work so well in that environment and removing it is going to be a tough sell.
In short, as Zuckerberg himself pointed out, email may be dying for personal communication but that was taking place well before the Facebook announcement as young people are turning away from email more and more considering it too “formal”.
That change, most likely, would happen with or without Facebook and in many ways is already taking place.
Still, email won’t likely be going anywhere for the near future. Just like physical letters remain to day, albeit for a more limited use, it’s almost a certainty we will be getting email for a long time to come.
This guest post was written by Lior who works for iAdvize, a live chat support tool and also for Producteev, who is an online task management startup.