Friday, November 12, 2010

Who needs a Facebook email?

According to TechCrunch, Facebook will offer email service, starting on Monday. Rumors of a Facebook e-mail service first surfaced in February. At the time, it was suggested that your Facebook vanity URL might be automatically assigned to you as your @facebook.com e-mail address.



As far I know, to be a member at Facebook you need to to have an email address, why another one?

I had in my life maybe 50 different email addresses the only one which only twice changed, is my very private one (i changed it when I got married and took my wife's name and changed it back when i got divorced). Email addresses are like phone numbers you don't want to change them only if you must, otherwise it is such hassle to inform everybody.

Then there are the email addresses we use for things we know we will get spam, these accounts we don't care and change a couple of time. And then we might have an email address for things our spouse should not know about or for flirting etc.

I don't want to have a vanity url email address at facebook, otherwise I will get emails from 500 million people. I don't want to use a Facebook email for spam otherwise my Facebook page get full of spam.

I don't want to use a Facebook email for cheating or flirting otherwise the recipient would instantly find out who I am and who my friends are and if I lie or not.

The rumors are saying that these email comes with a full blown online email client. I think this is the better news. There is still space in the universe for another web based email service. But should it be facebook? Google had big times issues with gmail and user privacy. First when they launched and searched all emails to serve better personalized ads, and then when they had buzz and assuming that people are friends only because they had many emails going forward and back.

Facebook has much more info about their users and everybody who seriously thinks this would not influence the email service must be mistaken.

And don't forget every new big feature from Facebook did violate privacy and needed to be corrected as soon it got public.

The service will be free but not free of advertisement, perfect personalized ads in the client. Pretty sure many privacy concerns are just a few steps away.

Supposedly the email service allows imap and pop which allows the user to connect the email to offline clients like outlook. Yippie computer crashes after 3 hours because everybody gets from everybody emails.

Facebook would have from one day to another the biggest email network, if everybody would get from the beginning an email addresses.

But i think only hard core Facebook fans and bloggers who are testing the service would want to have a Facebook email.

The only way that Facebook could be successful with the service, is the email service is much more optimized for social (what ever it means) and is at least as good as Google Gmail.

Let us see what will be announced and if it is email then be sure you can soon email me to my Facebook account till I know if it is a good service or not.

Looking back, it is interesting how Facebook tries to fight against google, they are not only fighting about products and services but they even steel employees from
Google. It is so bad that google gave everybody a 10% raise and a $1000 Christmas bonus.

On the other hand google and Apple are fighting for mobile and browser market.
And then google is trying to get a hold on PC Os a small try to fight with MS. All this could be a problem for Google and the right time for Facebook. Google is too much concentrated to comet with others than with their own business.

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