Facebook finally revealed the much hyped features of Facebook’s new mystery “email” service. It’s called Facebook Messages, and it’s a mixture of several types of communication platforms including email, Chat (IM) and SMS. Facebook already provided SMS and member-to-member messages and chat, so it’s not a huge surprise that these are all encompassed in the new Facebook Messages service. Facebook says “This is not an email killer. This is a messaging system that includes email as one part of it.”
Facebook Messages focuses on three priorities:
1- Seamless Messaging integration across multiple communications channels
2- a single Conversation History
3- a Social Inbox for filtering messages
If you think about it as email only, you won’t see the entire picture. According to Facebook, IM/chat, text and email should all be one thing. They call it Seamless Messaging. It’s an evolution from our normal one-channel communications. In Seamless Messaging, you decide how you want to talk to your friends: via SMS, chat, email or Messages. They will receive your message through whatever medium or device is convenient for them, and you can both have a conversation in real time.
The Conversation History feature of Facebook Messages is built around communicating with your friends. It will put all of your conversations in one place preserving all your message history. Conversations are stored, giving users a complete record of their communications with their Facebook friends.
The Social Inbox feature is similar to Google’s Priority Inbox, which displays your most important messages based on your interaction history. Facebook Messages filters your messages, IM’s and emails from your Facebook friends and puts them in a designated area. All other messages go in a second inbox. Because Facebook knows who your friends are, they can do some really good filtering to make sure you get messages from the people you care about. This process works on all Facebook’s iPhone and iPad apps as well as Facebook.com.
Every Facebook user can get an @facebook.com email address. Your username is the same as your vanity profile name. But this is optional. If you don’t want it, non-email aspects of the service will work just fine without it. Facebook Messages also supports attachments, which is an extension of Facebook’s photo sharing capabilities. And you will be able to email people outside of Facebook.
IMAP support is coming and an updated iPhone app is in the works. The new system will roll out gradually over the next few months. It will initially be by invitation only, with broader access coming in phases. If you’d like an invitation, visit Facebook’s The New Messages page.
Facebook Messages: What You Need To Know is a post from the Mass Transmit Broadcast Blog. Subscribe to receive blog posts via email. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+!
