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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.
So, it's gmail/gchat? Whoopdedoo.
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?
Maybe somebody will figure out how to use it this time around.
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!
Another way to talk to people I never see in person!
Facebook is the only technologically literate company to get Social Networking correct. Where all others have failed, Facebook has broken through the weeds into the clearing and are far ahead of everyone else. Even the mighty Google failed with Buzz and now Facebook is doing something new and original by introducing a messaging system that is not designed to replace e-mail. Hopefully, if they get this correct, they will be able to log and store all your messages so that you never lose them even after you get drunk or high and try to delete them!
Zuckerberg has really turned it around with this move and let me be the first to welcome Zuckerberg to my browser where my industrious and productive Farmville makes every visitor happy. The future is here. The future is now. The future is Facebook.
"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."
In other words, you will now be able to get to see just what you want and eliminate all the noise, spam and crap you never ever wanted to see in the first place...wasn't that the reason we signed up for social networking to begin with?
To me, facebook is admitting that their service is so flooded with crap that they now need a built-in crap filter to make it useful again.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
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
"Duhhhhh...." - Jason Priestly
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
Have they tried pushing this as a standard, distributed, normal internet protocol or is this just one more extension to facebook's "eco-system" that screws up internet principles?
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
Well, except for the fact that its nothing like Google Wave, which was largely a collaborative editing platform.
Its more like googles integrated messaging suite -- with the Gmail integrated interface with chat, email, status updates (Buzz), voice messaging/calling, etc., options for many of those to be delivered to phones via SMS, etc.
Does it have a 'real' delete button?
Zuckerberg made it clear that this service is the result of product research. He said that young people consistently told him email was "too slow." When he dug into their answer they didn't mean slow as in "it takes too long to get to you", they meant they didn't want to have to log into yet another application to read their emails. Among that demographic, a sizable number don't even use a separate email account. They just use SMS on phones and Facebook (either chat or messaging) to communicate. So the main benefits he and "Bozz", his Director of Engineering touted was the reduced friction involved in being able to quickly message through the app you're probably already logged into with the knowledge that your message will get through to the recipient whether or not they use Facebook.
Imagination is more important than knowledge -Einstien
Sorry guys, but I trust the brain power at Google to keep my emails safer than Facebook. Not to dis Facebook engineers, but they are nowhere near the capacity of Google. If I'm going to send information that I don't want leaked or have conversations that need to be private, I'm not looking to Facebook anytime soon as the conduit.
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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.