Slashdot Mirror
New Facebook Messaging System Announced
Mark Zuckerberg just held a presentation to unveil Facebook's "next generation messaging" system. He repeatedly drove home the idea that "this is not email," nor is it "an email killer." Their plan is to tie together multiple forms of communication — email, texts, social updates, etc. — and blend them into conversations. As users go about their days, interacting with a variety of devices, the communication method automatically updates to whatever is appropriate at the time. If a user receives an email while he's at a desktop, browsing Facebook, it will bring up the message in a Facebook chat window. If the user is browsing on a smartphone, it will bring up the message there, instead. If it's a dumbphone, then a text message can be sent. Another central feature is the idea that conversation histories from multiple sources and different forms of communication can be integrated through Facebook, so that you no longer have to separately root through IM logs, SMS logs, old emails, etc., to see old correspondence. (Users will have the ability to delete these, should they desire.) The last major feature they mentioned is what they call the "social" inbox, which is based on whitelisting. Users will be able to set up primary inboxes which only display communications they definitely want to see, while leaving low-priority messages, spam, and all the other noise typical to email in an inbox they check less frequently. The new system will be rolled out slowly over the next few months.
Facebook wants all your messages so they can mine them for any possible personal information and sell it to the highest bidders. Is anyone surprised?
That sounds very similar to the idea behind Wave.
Which is interesting, since it's not so long ago that the Wave creator quit Google for Facebook.
Let's see if the idea fares any better on facebook than it did on Google.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Facebook simply wants to coerce its users to put in real contact data, that is a lot more valuable to sell later:
- email accounts
- real mobile phone numbers
- IM accounts
I have misgivings about giving Google access to this much data, and at least they promise to act responsibly.
Learn about Photography Basics.
It was inevitable that Facebook would decide to become its own little internet. Good luck with that, Facebook.
Seriously, this is one of those things that every major player has attempted at one time or another. The idea of having one interface for all of your stuff is great, but ALL of the big players (Apple, Cisco, Google, Microsoft, etc.) have tried their hand at it and failed to seize the market.
And why did they fail? Interoperability and greed. They all want you to use only their platform. Until my Cisco IP phone can display text messages from my iPhone on the Rogers network, or until Exchange can display conversations from Google chat, this will NEVER happen. Facebook may have the majority market share on "Internet presence", but the vendors all need to play nice for truly unified communications.
Actually, I suspect that the fact that it's integrated right into Facebook will make it far more successful than Wave was. It may still not be a resounding success / 'gmail killer', but I've already seen a lot of my less-technical friends move to Facebook messaging for most of their communications with friends - event invites, messages, chat, wall updates, etc., all going through Facebook. If Facebook continues to grow, it could very well become the "platform of choice" for messaging for a large number of people. Wave honestly wasn't pushed that hard, and it wasn't really marketed as "something to do awesome messaging!" It was, "This thing we built that's kinda neat, see what you think."
Facebook is also MUCH more aggressive than Google about opting-in users for new services.
I'm not saying any of this is necessarily a *good* thing - in fact, for privacy, it will probably be a very bad thing - but I expect this service will be significantly more successful than Wave, simply because Facebook is huge, and they're not above using that size to opt-in every single one of their users for a new service. And while some of their use-cases seem to be a little creepy, they do (for better or worse), seem to think about "what are our users going to *do* with this thing?" Wave was sort of billed as "a cool collaboration thingy that you should totally check out. if you want to. Maybe? Please?" It was a cool piece of tech, but it was a solution looking for a problem.
In the beginning, the geeks floated in the muck with the commoners. And they were annoyed and so they built a boat on which to hide from that underneath.
And then the commoners heard of the boat and they too, came aboard.
And so then, the geeks, annoyed, hopped back into the mucky waters below, only to find it empty and serene.
And so is my view of the Internet, as I watch the shadows of the SS Facebook floating above me. I can hear it's muted basslines if I stop long enough to listen.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
"Will you walk in to my Parlour, Said the Spider to the Fly..."
Tis the prettiest little parlor
That ever you did spy.
The way into my parlor
Is up a winding stair,
And I have many pretty things
To show when you are there."
"Oh, no, no!" said the little fly,
"To ask me is in vain;
For who goes up your winding stair
Can ne'er come down again."
"I'm sure you must be weary
With soaring up so high;
Will you rest upon my little bed?"
Said the spider to the fly.
"There are pretty curtains drawn around,
The sheets are fine and thin;
And if you like to rest awhile,
I'll snugly tuck you in."
"Oh, no, no!" said the little fly,
"For I've often heard it said,
They never, never wake again
Who sleep upon your bed."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Also, unless you change the default settings, opt out, and keep up wit the changes, other people will be allowed to read your email, and send email on you behalf.
Actually your primary communications forums in Facebook aren't "flooded by crap," unless you accept every invite and request sent to you - and in that case, you might as well submit your email address to every web site you visit that asks you to "register", you'll get the same results. If Facebook starts allowing people to message you using "@facebook.com" email addresses, you will rapidly end up receiving spam there. I have no need for a whitelist at present, because my friends on Facebook are only (and actually) the people I care to communicate with, and I ignore any requests from people I don't know. If they were to expose an @facebook.com email address, then any J Random Spambot can message me... and that'd be a problem. Implementing a whitelist is pretty much the only way to prevent that.
That YouTube clip is interesting. It sounds almost like music - but made by white people, instead.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It's actually worse than that. If Facebook is going to wind up having direct access to your e-mail, then they are also able to mine information from your contacts (who may not wish to have anything to do with Facebook, have not given their consent, and have no way of detecting in advance that this will happen) from your end.
This, of course, is pretty standard Facebook MO; see the whole fiasco about importing contact details etc. lately. However, it's even more creepy than usual, because it's entering a space where people expect that e-mail is passed from senders to recipients through neutral service providers, without the mass of data mining on the way. And yes, I do have similar concerns about Google Mail.
IMHO, service providers should be service providers and social/data mining companies should be social/data mining companies. The trend to mix them up fundamentally compromises privacy on a new level and ultimately could undermine the whole collaborative/open nature of Internet communications. It's somewhat like the common carrier principle: you can provide a communications channel transparently and neutrally, and be accorded some basic protections for doing so, or you can actively be involved in scanning or altering the content, but then you need to be regulated for privacy purposes, editorially responsible for the content, etc. Providing the exemptions/protections without the responsibility seems like a recipe for disaster to me.
On the bright side, perhaps we will finally get the long-overdue switch to end-to-end encrypted e-mail by default after enough unfortunate people get burned due to leaks.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.