It seems like there’s been a lot of updating by the two tech-giants across the pond; Google with its places and HotPot, and now Facebook is introducing a new feature called Facebook Messages.
At an event on Monday, in San Francisco, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a major upgrade to the social network’s messaging system, now call Messages, that is now designed to incorporate other forms of communication; chat, sms and email.
It’s been floating around cyber space for some time that Facebook was in the process of setting up an email system, allowing users to claim their facebook.com email address. Code-named Titan, it was confirmed by Mark Zuckerberg on Monday, and will become an integral feature in Facebook Messages. Dubbed the Gmail Killer, Facebook email will become another bow in the social giants armoury.
Currently in the beta-stages, Facebook Messages is slowly being rolled out and is currently invitation-only. Grab an invite from Facebook, and over the next few days or weeks (They’re not very clear on when) you’ll get an invite offering you to join their latest service.
With a potential contact list of over 500 million users, this could be seen a natural progression for the Sal Palo-based company, and really will make Facebook the on-stop shop when it comes to contacting friends.
As with any update of this scale, there have been worries about privacy and with Facebook collecting not only emails, but also SMS conversation’s, it’s understandable that people are starting to become wary of just how much data Facebook has about us. Although, in my view, it’s something I will never worry about; I don’t think Facebook will ever mine data to such low-level of granularity and would never affect me on a personal level.
After sending for my invite, I look forward to seeing what this new service has to offer; having numerous email accounts spread across several platforms, I quite like the idea of being able to use Facebook Messages to collect my emails, chat with friends and have it all stored in one central location.
We’ll just have to see how businesses, like our paintball company, can use this new feature to increase our reach to more customers.
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