The next step for the social network ...
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today unveiled a series of innovations in the social network’s messaging services.
He set his stall out firmly from the start, claiming ‘this is not e-mail’, adding: ‘we don’t think a modern messaging service is going to be email’.
Speaking at an event at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, California, Zuckerberg explained how Facebook’s new service would focus on three major priorities; integration across communications channels, a social inbox for message filtering and a single conversation history.
‘It needs to be immediate’ he explained. ’I'm not saying you need to send an e-mail and it shows up at the speed of light,’ he added, ‘but the speed of instant messaging or text messages on cell phones is dramatically different from e-mails. We can do better’
Although every Facebook user will recieve an @facebook address linked to their current user name, the service will focus more on an instant messaging platform than traditional email.
Although Microsoft’s Hotmail (361m worldwide users), Yahoo Mail (273m users) and Google’s Gmail (193m users) strongly dominate current online email provision, Facebook will be looking to take advantage of its existing 500 million users to get a head start in the market.
The news of Facebook’s foray into messaging comes against the backdrop of AOL’s Project Phoenix, which will see the search giant and former email brand leaders try to regain a grip on the messaging market.
Phoenix, which is set to launch in 2011 will allow the integration of a number of non-geographic web email addresses through one account.
