Facebook came out with it’s next step towards internet domination. With it’s new email or not email or social email platform, or whatever you want to call it. It all sounds very wavesque to me.
It sounds great. One place to go for all communication.
IM, Facebook chat, SMS and yes, email. They don’t include Twitter, which I’m sure was by design. There are also a few things that aren’t very clear, and if you watched the announcement yesterday, you were probably left with more questions then answers. Here’s a few of the things that come to mind.
Zuckerberg and Bosworth discussed how you can have conversations with the people across multiple platforms, but even in the Q&A they didn’t really explain how it would be decided on which platform you message would be sent. It sure seemed like they were saying that Facebook would decide for you. But how?
Another thing is if I have contacts that I only communicate with via email, or phone or whatever. How much of my info. will they get? Will everyone be or have to be connected via Facebook friends? Will they be able to send messages to me on IM or SMS? Can I control that?
The big question, which nobody directly asked and Zuckerberg avoided is, what is happening with all my data? I.E. contact info. content of messages, contacts. Is Facebook going to mine this data. My guess is yes. So the next question, who are they going to share it with?
Is it an email killer? I doubt it. Yes it’s true that people are using IM, texting, Facebooking, etc. a lot more now. It is also true that many people, particularly the younger generation view email as cumbersome and slow, but I don’t think the Facebook option will replace corporate email anytime soon.
Facebook continues to find new ways to integrate the rest of our lives into the Facebook platform. Open graph brings data from around the internet back to Facebook and shares it with your friends as well as third parties. The new communication system will surely do the same.
What do you think? For now the service is invite only, will you use the new service? Do you see privacy issues? Let us know.
Watch the video of the press release below.
