Facebook Inbox Throws Blow At Google... No Flinch?

CWmike writes "Facebook's new messaging system may not be a Gmail killer, but it's definitely another blow in the growing battle between two Internet bigwigs. Facebook took the wraps off what it's calling a modern messaging system on Monday. The new system is designed to handle the convergence of different kinds of messages — Facebook messages, IMs, SMS and e-mail — and bring them together under a single social umbrella. The system also allows users to have a facebook.com email address, though it will work with other e-mail systems like Gmail and Yahoo. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is adamant that it's not intended to replace e-mail, but industry analysts say the new system will almost certainly draw some users away from Yahoo mail and Google's Gmail. Meanwhile, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Computerworld that he's not worried at all about Facebook's new 'Social Inbox.' 'More competition is always good because it makes the market larger,' Schmidt said, charging that journalists were hyping the rivalry: 'As a group, you all are focused on the competition rather than the market getting larger. It brings more people in. We are all served by having everybody in the world get online.'"

Comments

Uh huh ...

[ScrewMaster]

'More competition is always good because it makes the market larger,' Schmidt said, charging that journalists were hyping the rivalry: 'As a group, you all are focused on the competition rather than the market getting larger. It brings more people in. We are all served by having everybody in the world get online.'

Upon returning to his office after the press conference, Mr. Schmidt was heard to say, "I'm gonna fuckin' KILL Facebook!"

Re:Uh huh ...

[Enderandrew]

Or he calmly went back to his near-utopian Google campus and said, "I feel bad for Facebook. They have no idea what we have up our sleeve." And then he spent the rest of the day playing ping pong.

Re:Uh huh ...

[ScrewMaster]

Troll, huh. Humorless bastards.

Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[Anonymous Coward]

More people shifting from open federated protocols to the closed world of Facebook is a bad thing. I sincerely hope that it doesn't happen.

Re:Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[WrongSizeGlass]

More people shifting from open federated protocols to the closed world of Facebook is a bad thing. I sincerely hope that it doesn't happen.

AOL had a shot at this and lost it. People are fickle and the 'latest greatest' trends will turn Facebook into the next MySpace within a few more years. What will replace Facebook? That is the billion dollar question.

Re:Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[ScrewMaster]

More people shifting from open federated protocols to the closed world of Facebook is a bad thing. I sincerely hope that it doesn't happen.

AOL had a shot at this and lost it. People are fickle and the 'latest greatest' trends will turn Facebook into the next MySpace within a few more years. What will replace Facebook? That is the billion dollar question.

Well, if the answer to that question (and I agree, it's a legitimate question) happens to be "nothing", well, I'm afraid I won't be losing much sleep over it.

Re:Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[hedwards]

I wouldn't say that it's inevitable, but the odds are really long on Facebook still being relevant 10 years from now. It could happen, but given the lack of competence exhibited by Facebook's managers, I would be surprised if it was still relevant in 5.

Re:Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[SETIGuy]

The lack of competence goes all the way to the top. Facebook is coasting on inertia at this point and surviving on the lack of a decent competitor. As far as I can tell the current business model is based upon taking away the features users like and adding ones they don't want. And somehow some businesses still advertise there.

Re:Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[ScrewMaster]

The lack of competence goes all the way to the top. Facebook is coasting on inertia at this point and surviving on the lack of a decent competitor. As far as I can tell the current business model is based upon taking away the features users like and adding ones they don't want. And somehow some businesses still advertise there.

Well, if that's true (and I've never been a Facebook user, so I'll take your word for it) it sounds like Facebook is ripe for the plucking. Other posters were wondering if Facebook would still be relevant five or ten years from now. I think somebody may steal Zuckerbert's thunder well before then: things happen fast in social-network time.

Re:Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[Yvanhoe]

They are competent enough to realize that their success relies on making migration from their service hard and on people not understanding what it means. They are actively trying to mantain these two factors. It is enough competence to last a few more years.

Re:Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't care less if their management lacks competence. What bothers me is that most of their avid user base has no computer competence at all and think that using Facebook no longer makes them "computer illiterates".

So when this huge and hugely ignorant market wants to use Facebook for communication they have no knowledge about the effect this will have. I dread the day when people only start using Facebook for communication. I have already told a number of people not to IM me over Facebook, although I have an account I rarely log on, and prefer real life communication, phone or e-mail over webbased alternatives.

When on the subject of Facebooks alternative to e-mail: No subject lines sounds like a consequence of merging mail with SMS and other forms of communication where there is no subject lines, ie the lowest common denominator. But Facebook marketing swings this the other way and markets it as a "feature" claiming that sorting on recipient works better. Anyone with real friend/colleagues/customers/business associates that they communicate a lot with know that you can be involved in a lot of different discussions with the same party at any given moment. Subject is one way to differentiate these discussions.

But with enough marketing you can fool the ignorant masses into liking almost anything...

Re:Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[drinkypoo]

Absolutely the only competitor with a chance to pull this off is Google, because they're the only ones with a sufficiently large user base. They could have done it with Wave if they introduced the user to improved IM and gave them more features over time but this was too obvious. And of course only if they had integrated it with gmail out of the box.

Re:Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[dgatwood]

More people shifting from open federated protocols to the closed world of Facebook is a bad thing. I sincerely hope that it doesn't happen.

It won't, or at least not for long. Facebook is too fundamentally broken. My account was hacked yesterday, and some d**n bot sent out chat messages to my friends trying to get them to sign up for IQ tests. I didn't feel violated, just annoyed. I kicked the bot with an account block/password reset, and I doubt I'll have problems again for a while.

The reason for that happening was twofold:

1. Facebook, to my knowledge, has no system for detecting distributed password guessing on an account and notifying the owner of the account or requiring additional authentication beyond the password in order to make forward progress (e.g. receiving an email at the registered account). Instead, they don't do anything until somebody reports the account as having been hijacked, by which time the attacker has been doing things for who-knows-how-long.
2. I used my lowest security password because I have about as much trust in Facebook's ability to keep my passwords safe as I do in the TSA to keep my flights safe.

Why, you might ask, do I consider Facebook to be completely unable to keep passwords safe? Because their entire security model is fundamentally broken, so I don't trust them at all. Here's a quick look of some of the more egregious flaws:

• Connections are made in-the-clear over HTTP instead of HTTPS. It's unclear if this applies to login credentials or not.
• Facebook forces you back to the HTTP site even if you connect via HTTPS. Every single solitary link generated programmatically by Facebook is an HTTP link even if you connected via HTTPS. That's a fundamental security screw-up, as it makes the site impossible to use in a secure fashion.
• Facebook relies on cookies as the sole access tokens instead of using proper browser-based security such as user certificates or HTTP digest authentication. This means that anyone who can sniff a single request now has full access to your account merely by capturing the site cookies and replaying them with a new request.
• Facebook has no mechanism for requiring additional authentication when a client connects from a previously unknown IP address or IP range.
• Facebook has no mechanism for preventing keyboard sniffers from obtaining your login credentials.

The net effect of this is that Facebook is at the very bottom tier as far as my trust tiers go. I do not use any password on that site that I care about, and I treat everything on Facebook as inherently untrustworthy.

For this reason, I will never use Facebook as my primary email platform. It simply does not have the same trust as email (which itself has a fairly low level of trust because of the ease of spoofing). And I know that most of my friends (even those who are not particularly technically inclined) know this also. So unless Facebook massively improves their security story, they will not supersede email.

Re:Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[Anonymous Coward]

More people shifting from open federated protocols to the closed world of Facebook is a bad thing. I sincerely hope that it doesn't happen.

AOL had a shot at this and lost it. People are fickle and the 'latest greatest' trends will turn Facebook into the next MySpace within a few more years. What will replace Facebook? That is the billion dollar question.

Geocities? AOL? Classmates.com? BBS?

Kids are into retro these days.

Re:Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[nametaken]

I'm not sure that's an honest assessment. Their user base continues to grow and their advertising program has become a juggernaut in the industry. The WSJ reported that in September, 24% of all online ads were shown through Facebook. That's hardly consistent with "somehow some businesses still advertise there". The difference you might be interested in, is that they're only pulling down about 9% of the $'s spent on online advertising. They're not able to charge the premium for ad space that Google is.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703665904575600482851430358.html

I see no indication that Facebook is hurting itself in any way that should concern them. Not yet, anyway.

Re:Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a dead simple answer why businesses advertise there. They get results. They are able to market their products directly at their target market. The more data you feed into FB the more targeted the AD's they can display for you.

Re:Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[tmmagee]

And I would be surprised if this prediction is even remotely accurate. Do you use Facebook? It is increasingly becoming the only website you need to keep in touch with your contacts/friends and it is the only website that I have ever encountered that actually makes Google search engine less relevant. My friends no longer tell me to "Google" something that comes up in a conversation. They just post the link with a description of why they might like it to their profiles.

Last but not least: they have done a really, really nice job with the website. As far as Web 2.0 apps go, I would put facebook second only to gmail.

Re:Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[SCHecklerX]

And we used to have usenet, and now have 'forums'. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the dumber walled-garden approach as the one that fails.

Re:Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[ScrewMaster]

The more data you feed into FB the more targeted the AD's they can display for you.

So true. My answer to that was ... not to feed them anything.

Re:Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[ScrewMaster]

My friends no longer tell me to "Google" something that comes up in a conversation. They just post the link with a description of why they might like it to their profiles.

Ah yes ... but where did they find that link?

Re:Schmidt might not be worried, but I am.

[ScrewMaster]

For this reason, I will never use Facebook as my primary email platform. It simply does not have the same trust as email (which itself has a fairly low level of trust because of the ease of spoofing). And I know that most of my friends (even those who are not particularly technically inclined) know this also. So unless Facebook massively improves their security story, they will not supersede email.

This guy deserves a few mod points. I don't have any, or I'd bump him up myself.

It's been done

[Joe Snipe]

I already have 90% of the same functionality through Google voice, so I don't expect Google will do much of anything.

Re:It's been done

[countSudoku()]

If anything, this makes me want to disable my facebark as there is too much feature creep and too much Creepyberg. The core functionality has been lost underneath a shitstorm of new features that make me scramble for the options settings to turn the fuckerbergs off. WTF. Why not do the core functionality and let ME decide if I want to use the new GoogleWave... er, facebook wave? Is that too much to ask? Apparently so.

The only spam I ever get on my one clean gmail account IS from a facebook invite, and not the one I ended up signing up with. From day one, FB has been a threat. Use at your own risk, Saddos!

Re:It's been done

[lmnfrs]

Use at your own risk, Saddos!

No kidding. The only reason I have an account there is that I fell for an old trick, and didn't look at the actual href of the link I clicked.

Re:It's been done

[Lucractius]

Well interestingly enough. Facebook are offering this to everyone. Not just to the USA.

I'd prefer Google voice. But unfortunately, Google wont even let me pay them to give me an account in Australia, nor do they seem at all interested as no single other country has been added since they opened Google Voice. Not even your neighbor Canada.

Re:It's been done

[uniquegeek]

Feature creep and bogging down? It's ICQ all over again.

Meh

[WrongSizeGlass]

These two are going to fight over users, or rather users' personal data? There's enough users and marketing companies to go around. Both of them will prosper by selling out their users. This world is big enough for both of them.

Re:Meh

[Enderandrew]

Correction.

One company just directs ads to you. They serve the ads directly and they don't hand over your private data.

The other company routinely changes privacy policies every couple months so you don't know they're exposing and selling your data after you repeatedly told them you don't want them doing that.

Re:Meh

[flappinbooger]

Yeah I'd rather have a @gmail.com and actually TELL that to someone than to make a @facebook.com and tell that to someone.

I admit I have a facebook account (along with apparently all the rest of the world) but I don't actually brag about it.

It just isn't professional. Neither is @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com and certainly not @aol.com. @gmail.com is semi-professional yet I do have my own domains which I would put on a business card.

Re:Meh

[Enderandrew]

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/email_address

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Zuckerberg dilutes Eduardo's shares so they become worthless. Facebook dilutes your privacy ...

Is it worse than Google consuming all your data so that it becomes a commodity to trade for ads?

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook owns "one in ten people" with their current subscription rate. Not "everyone on earth" by a long shot.

The current unemployment rate in the US was at 10% not long ago.
No "one in ten" statistics from this list implies this mythical "everyone's doing it". Do a search in your favorite search engine, including quotes, for "one in ten people"

"Facebook's new messaging system"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this (like "Places") another one of those big Facebook "features" that you have to live in the US to see/use?

I'm from Canada and I don't see any visible changes to the messaging system whatsoever... and Places was launched back in the summer and yet there's no sign of it either... so I anticipate we'll see these features approximately.... never?

-AC

Re:"Facebook's new messaging system"?

[ScrewMaster]

Is this (like "Places") another one of those big Facebook "features" that you have to live in the US to see/use?

I'm from Canada and I don't see any visible changes to the messaging system whatsoever... and Places was launched back in the summer and yet there's no sign of it either... so I anticipate we'll see these features approximately.... never?

-AC

Hard to say. Google usually rolls out new services here in the U.S. first (think of us as one giant beta test site) before bringing them to other countries. I don't know much about Facebook in that regard, however.

Re:"Facebook's new messaging system"?

[countSudoku()]

Consider yourself lucky! Here in the USandAs we have to put up with corporations getting their way, until something bad happens, then we get consumer protection as an afterthought. In your case, FB is unable to spring new privacy problems, I mean new "features," on you because your government probably has some good protections in place to thwart the FaceBook Corporation from exporting stupidity.

Re:"Facebook's new messaging system"?

[Dishevel]

I still do not understand why you would care. I mean it is not like people with brains and some self respect use facebook. Let them do whatever they want to idiots.

Re:"Facebook's new messaging system"?

[flowwolf]

This isn't true at all. Our 'Privacy Commissioner' confronted FB last year, but that got us no where. They still sell and make our personal data available to anyone who buys it. Personally, I think somehow they staged the whole report to make it look like officials are taking care of business. The changes that the canadian government worked with FB to make were those dumb privacy controls that are available in every country. They are complicated and constantly changing and are rarely understood by people. Thanks for that Canadian government.. i guess?

The real reason is probably more technical than political.

Re:"Facebook's new messaging system"?

[c6gunner]

Who cares, it's facebook. Personally, I'm still pissed that Google sent me an invite to Google Voice when it was still in beta, only to then tell me that it wasn't available for Canadian residents. I was like a kid on Christas morning, eagerly tearing into a humongous, gorgeously wrapped gift, only to discover it contained 2 croutons and a pair of dirty socks. Thanks a lot, assholes!

Re:"Facebook's new messaging system"?

[SETIGuy]

I'm from Canada and I don't see any visible changes to the messaging system whatsoever... and Places was launched back in the summer and yet there's no sign of it either... so I anticipate we'll see these features approximately.... never?

The new messaging system is being deployed by invite only. And I'm in the U.S. and I've never seen Places either.

Re:"Facebook's new messaging system"?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'm still pissed that Google sent me an invite to Google Voice when it was still in beta,

I too would be disgusted to receive a verb such as "invite" when what I really wanted was a noun, "invitation".

Re:"Facebook's new messaging system"?

[HJED]

I'm in Australia and I have seen people using places and there's a whole load of extra 'privacy' settings (off by default) you need to change so that people can't post your location.

what ever happened to good old email?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, the kind where the content was not owned and searched by a multinational corporation?

I mean it as a serious question, not rhetorical. Why are SO many people willing to have all their communication logged and data-mined by for-profit companies? We've had email since around 1720. OK, maybe more like 1970-1, but anyway still a really long time. Until very recently, it was never true that a huge fraction of it was all going through facebook or google.

Why on earth would people give that up? I can't see what benefit they are getting. As far as I can tell, all modes allowed by something like gmail or facebook can be accomplished without the corporate overlords in the picture. There is email, non-corporate IM, and so forth.

What am I missing? I seem perfectly able to communicate with all my friends online both in real time and non-real time without using those things, so it can't be "you will be isolated!!11!one!"

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[ScrewMaster]

You know, the kind where the content was not owned and searched by a multinational corporation?

I mean it as a serious question, not rhetorical. Why are SO many people willing to have all their communication logged and data-mined by for-profit companies? We've had email since around 1720. OK, maybe more like 1970-1, but anyway still a really long time. Until very recently, it was never true that a huge fraction of it was all going through facebook or google.

Why on earth would people give that up? I can't see what benefit they are getting. As far as I can tell, all modes allowed by something like gmail or facebook can be accomplished without the corporate overlords in the picture. There is email, non-corporate IM, and so forth.

What am I missing? I seem perfectly able to communicate with all my friends online both in real time and non-real time without using those things, so it can't be "you will be isolated!!11!one!"

I don't have an answer, other than the fact that these services are "free" and whatever downsides there are to these technologies, most people seem blissfully unaware of them. I'm on your side though: I've run my own mail server since before the Internet went public (I ran a decent BBS at one point, and was a hub for a number of mail networks.) When I first got online with the Internet, my first thought was to do the same for my own mail. I saw (and still) see no reason to let my mail pass through anyone else's servers if I don't have to. I wouldn't want my snail mail pawed over by a corporation looking to sell "targeted" junk mail either.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[hedwards]

That's not possible. Email that only goes through your server is generally referred to as PM. In order to get anywhere with email it has to go through any number of other servers.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[fishexe]

We've had email since around 1720. OK, maybe more like 1970-1, but anyway still a really long time.

Yeah, 1720 was when IP over Avian Carriers was invented, though it took that one 270 years of use to even get put into a written standard.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[shoehornjob]

Why on earth would people give that up?

Because the were told to and they are stupid enough to believe it. Case closed.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[ScrewMaster]

That's not possible. Email that only goes through your server is generally referred to as PM. In order to get anywhere with email it has to go through any number of other servers.

Depends. With outgoing mail, my server attempts to connect directly to the target mail server (I don't use my ISP's mail services in either direction.)

Now, my hosting service allows me to set their MX records to point directly to my server: incoming mail doesn't ever get stored on their server. The remote host does a domain lookup, connects to the host company's server and gets the MX record, which points directly to my server and connects to it. It also means that I don't have to poll anyone's server for my mail.

It's the best I can do, but it's better than nothing.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[sgage]

No kidding. My ISP, with whom I've been doing business for 15 years, decided without any input from customers to outsource their email to gmail. My email address is the same as ever, but it's done through gmail. I sent a complaint, never got an answer.

I don't have a great feeling about Google, but I have a very bad feeling about Facebook. I actually made an account just to see what it was all about, and after a couple of weeks pulled the plug - just too busy, and creepy. I have an actual life, and feel no need to create some faux "community" of people I vaguely know or who vaguely know people that I vaguely know.

But I have no choice with my email, and it pisses me off.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[noidentity]

As always, the universal solution is end-to-end encryption.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[tukang]

Depends. With outgoing mail, my server attempts to connect directly to the target mail server

Unless you have a direct physical connection to the target mail server, your mail will almost certainly go through a number of other servers. This is true for any internet traffic, so if you're really concerned about your privacy you should encrypt your email, in which case you can keep on using webmail.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[ScrewMaster]

Depends. With outgoing mail, my server attempts to connect directly to the target mail server

Unless you have a direct physical connection to the target mail server, your mail will almost certainly go through a number of other servers. This is true for any internet traffic, so if you're really concerned about your privacy you should encrypt your email, in which case you can keep on using webmail.

It will go through a number of routers, certainly. But that's not the same thing as saying it will be stored on a number of servers.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[ScrewMaster]

As always, the universal solution is end-to-end encryption.

No question there, so long as your country's legal system permits it.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[icebraining]

And that's why having your own domain is important. You could simply switch providers without changing your address.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[SETIGuy]

Why are SO many people willing to have all their communication logged and data-mined by for-profit companies?

For the features, of course. Grepping through 7GB of email is slower than hell. I have yet to find a mail client that will import and index that much mail without crashing. Even if one exists it will be damn slow when searching. It also won't be very useful from my phone for maintaining a merged email/phone/postal address book. That PC based client also won't store SMS texts with included images. Or translate my voicemails into text emails.

There's certainly a market for an email system that does all that without storing data non-locally. Nobody has developed it yet, and it won't gain wide acceptance unless it is marketed by Microsoft. And there you're back to having trust issues again.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[Roman Coder]

I asked my 19 year old son this same question, and he answered with "Nobody uses email anymore. We just text each other." /shrug

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[Anonymous Coward]

> For the features, of course. Grepping through 7GB of email is slower than hell.

Huh? My mailer indexes everything and searches are instantaneous. Certainly under a tenth of a second to find anything, even for complex boolean searches. What mail client are you using that's so slow?

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[Anonymous Coward]

"What am I missing? I seem perfectly able to communicate with all my friends online both in real time and non-real time without using those things, so it can't be "you will be isolated!!11!one!""

Facebook is more broadcast than email - you wouldn't send an email to all your contacts saying "Bought a new Xbox today!" or "Just switched jobs, now working on X project" would you?
Email is still point to point and fairly directed (you only send a email when you're expecting a reply, most of the time), whereas Facebook messages are more information broadcasts with no intended recipients (mostly).

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[edumacator]

I think one of the things people on /. tend to miss is that 99% of the population has no idea what you are talking about. I encourage people who know the ins and out of the internet to do what you are saying, but for anyone after that the question is, who do you trust?

People can choose along a continuum of size. You can be really personal, and have the whiz kid down the street set up your server, but then he might be really interested to see the love notes you send to your wife, who he happens to have a crush on. You could trust some mid-size company that claims to respect your privacy, but how do you know if they really do? Maybe they are a small company flying under the radar of the privacy groups who are more than willing to steal your data for profit. The last option is to trust a large company that is often scrutinized by privacy groups and would suffer a huge loss of public support if they were ever caught mining your data.

Now, none of these are good options and all of them can be abused by the person you entrust with your communications, but for the vast majority of the population, it's either that or snail mail.

It's easy to place all the blame on large corporations, and I think a lot of the blame is warranted, but the other options seem a little scary to me also. So we either use email and hope that no one is snooping, or we give it up.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[shutdown -p now]

I want a single inbox that is accessible from all of the half dozen devices that I use, and completely up-to-date at any given point regardless of which device is used. I don't see any other choice but the "cloud" here.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but it could also be secretly re-routed, scanned, and logged by any number of deviants in the middle.

AT&T, I'm looking at you.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same question for you: What mail client are you using?

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[ScrewMaster]

True, but it could also be secretly re-routed, scanned, and logged by any number of deviants in the middle.

AT&T, I'm looking at you.

Oh sure. That's the case no matter what you do, and if you really want your mail to be secure just encrypt it.

I just don't want my regular plaintext mail residing unnecessarily on anyone else's equipment, especially not my ISP's. Which, in my case, happens to be AT&T.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[ScrewMaster]

So we either use email and hope that no one is snooping, or we give it up.

Another option (and I have met a few people in this category over the years) is to learn how to defend yourself.

Some folks will spend years taking self-defense and martial arts classes, so they can be more secure in their physical person. Apply that same logic to network defense, and more people would be more secure. At least, if one is not a complete idiot about security, when asking that whiz kid to set up your server, you'll know if he's pulling the wool over your eyes.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[awyeah]

What client are you using that's so fast? (Seriously, I'm interested)

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[awyeah]

I'm a paid google apps user. Their search is lightning quick, of course. Although I've been playing with the latest Thunderbird as an IMAP client for it lately.

It's too bad Mulberry isn't under development anymore.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[ScrewMaster]

I think one of the things people on /. tend to miss is that 99% of the population has no idea what you are talking about.

Well, I don't know as we miss it, so much as find the entire issue utterly overwhelming. There are only so many geeks, nerds and technojocks to go around, and probably a billion Internet users who all need effective protection. Ultimately, the solution (if any) is going to have to be in vastly more secure operating systems put into widespread use. That would pretty much mean dumping Windows, though: Microsoft has had a couple of decades and a few rewrites to get it right, and they still haven't. Not to the degree that, say, one of the BSDs would be, and that's where we need to be. The bar is nowhere near high enough yet.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[IamTheRealMike]

Hmm. Under 100msec you say? Are you sure you have 7GB of data? To meet the deadlines you seem to believe are normal, your hard disk would need to do a max of maybe 5 seeks (some of the remaining time is needed for rotational delays and transfer/cpu). That's pretty impressive. I don't think you could reliably achieve that unless your system was not doing anything else at all and its filesystem was not even slightly fragmented. In other words, I don't think that's at all representative of most peoples computers. Maybe if you have the whole thing on flash storage it could be believable, but again - not representative.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[graffitirock]

> I have yet to find a mail client that will import and index that much mail without crashing.

http://sup.rubyforge.org/

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[halfnerd]

http://notmuchmail.org/

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[Anonymous Coward]

alpine client with cyrus imap server.

Simple!

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[bemymonkey]

Reasons to use Gmail:

1. Great webmail interface w/ decent threading
2. Good inbox search (have you noticed how bad some e-mail clients are at this?)
3. Tight Android integration including push e-mail
4. Tight GCal integration, which again has tight Android integration
5. Tight GDocs integration, which works well across platforms and also works well on Android with third-party apps
6. Tight GContacts integration, which again has tight Android integation

As an avid Gmail + Android user, I can say that it's definitely made my life much more integrated, seamless, and just easier. Can't do that with some obscure e-mail server or your own... unless you rent an Exchange server or set up your own. There are cheaper options of course, but that's just too much effort, IMO...

Reasons to use Facebook:

1. Possible text messaging integration, meaning I can send people who don't have internet on their phones messages without shoving money up my service provider's ass
2. Standardized FirstnameLastname@facebook.com e-mail addresses. I do like that...
3. Can't really think of anything else. Is there anything?

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[knarf]

Grepping through 7GB of email is slower than hell. I have yet to find a mail client that will import and index that much mail without crashing.

You don't want to use a mail *client* to index that mail! Leave it to the server instead. I have no problems searching through my mail archives which are somewhat smaller than yours as am picky in what I archive (no mailing lists etc) but with 1.1 GiB still constitute a lot of data. My mail server is nothing special either, a rebranded Intel NAS box with a 1.4 GHz single core Celeron and 2GiB of memory. It runs a bog-standard dovecot imap client and a web mail server (roundcube with a few site-specific changes) and works its way through our mail just fine. No ads, no big brother, no nothin'. Zuck and Schmidt can recreate Dante's Inferno in email and I'll be happily mailing away. If you have a permanent connection and an always-on machine (NAS box, router, etc) there is no reason not to run your own services as far as I can see - other than interfering ISP's of course. Yes, you'll have to take care of your own backups - which is where Gmail and PGP come in handy if you are so inclined - but that is a small price to pay for 'freedom' IMnsHO.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[Chrisq]

No kidding. My ISP, with whom I've been doing business for 15 years, decided without any input from customers to outsource their email to gmail. My email address is the same as ever, but it's done through gmail. I sent a complaint, never got an answer.

Thats gmail for you .... its probably in your ISP's spam box

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll love this "unintended consequences" answer: GMail succeeded because of Microsoft.

Tow factors work together,PST files and the way the average non-tech user gets their system loaded with cruft, bogged down with MS "hidden" files, attacked and infected with viruses or Trojans or other spyware (or my all time favourite breeding ground for PC Poison, Limewire). At that point I have two choices, either spend a week of my time trying to clean it (fat chance) or reinstall. Often recovering the PST files is impossible because they are so big and fragmented and the tools so bad. No default MS email installation ever seemed to use IMAP, so they lose all their email.

Note: they don't backup (they just DON'T) and they generally went through the cycle two or more times until they found GMail. They don't care that Google's looking at their email, 99.9% of the email I see is completely innocuous and boring, they just care that they didn't lose Mum or Dad's last emails, or Grannies just before she died.

Now they can get me to reinstall or even do it themselves (&Deity knows, they get enough practice) and the machine is suddenly 200% faster. Google just doesn't lose their stuff MS did.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[slyrat]

You know, the kind where the content was not owned and searched by a multinational corporation?

I mean it as a serious question, not rhetorical. Why are SO many people willing to have all their communication logged and data-mined by for-profit companies? We've had email since around 1720. OK, maybe more like 1970-1, but anyway still a really long time. Until very recently, it was never true that a huge fraction of it was all going through facebook or google.

Why on earth would people give that up? I can't see what benefit they are getting. As far as I can tell, all modes allowed by something like gmail or facebook can be accomplished without the corporate overlords in the picture. There is email, non-corporate IM, and so forth.

What am I missing? I seem perfectly able to communicate with all my friends online both in real time and non-real time without using those things, so it can't be "you will be isolated!!11!one!"

I find the real killer feature of gmail, and the reason I continue to use it, is really good message grouping. It makes reading emails from a group email very manageable and easy to see the flow of conversation. The ease of being able to check it anywhere is also helpful, but any online email has that feature.

Re:what ever happened to good old email?

[Idiomatick]

You could always get your own email address and then feed that through google's.... oh wait. my bad.

How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[RocketRabbit]

Google has always done a really, really good job at keeping spam out of my actual inbox. I have had a gmail account for an awfully long time, and the amount of spam that has made it into my inbox is miniscule.

Facebook, on the other hand, makes it a point to spam you with as much crap as possible. What use will a facebook.com mail account be when it is just choked with messages about virtual cows, virtual gifts, virtual sit-ins against and / or for just about everything, etc.

Google is a notorious marketer, but I don't fear them in the same way that I fear facebook. Google promises not to use the information they collect to personally identify you. Facebook already has your personal identification. What do you think that little prick Zuckerberg is going to do with it?

Let's ask Zuck himself:

SLASHDOT: so have you decided what you are going to do about the users?
ZUCK: yea i'm going to fuck them
ZUCK: probably in the ear
ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at internets
ZUCK: just ask
ZUCK: i have over 400000000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns
FRIEND: what!? how'd you manage that one?
ZUCK: people just submitted it
ZUCK: i don't know why
ZUCK: they "trust me"
ZUCK: dumb fucks

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[Stregano]

I agree. These are 2 different beasts. One got money through selling themselves out to spam, and one made money by, uh, selling themselves out and letting spam all over their search engine.

I guess the only difference is that Google is not passing my information around to their spam buddies, which I appreciate. With Google, it is much easier to keep my information private. Sure, there are profile settings within Facebook, but I have no clue what zuckerberg has in store for my personal information itself

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[RocketRabbit]

Well, the point is that Zuck himself has admitted that he thinks I am a dumb fuck for trusting him. He has gone on the record and said that he doesn't believe in privacy on the internet anyway.

He considers me a dumb fuck for even getting a facebook account in the first place, for giving him that information. Unfortunately like many people here, I was sort of roped into it by my family. They think it's awfully convenient and just think I'm a tool for suggesting that facebook might not be ultimately a good thing for the world. "Oh but I can keep up with all the people I never bothered to keep up with." Whoopee, but you can see the attraction there for some folks.

Hell, I know one girl who accepts friend requests from anybody, and posts a lot of suggestive photos of herself. She thinks it's all in fun, but I think she should be *very* afraid of that sort of interaction with thousands of random strangers.

My other buddy did facebook correctly. He used part of his real last name for his first name, made up a fictional last name, and posts nothing.

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[zmollusc]

Yipe! With all that money, he can't hire PR staff to deal with interviews like this?

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[Anonymous Coward]

On Facebook, I posted my real name and my gmail address. Outside of that, I used it some for posts (no images; I'm sure they'll revert to claiming ownership again some day) when I first got it, now it's basically quiet. I have the privacy dialed back pretty far, for whatever good that does, and I've given nothing more than my real name and gmail address still to this day. Friends can find me. That's all I wanted.

I'm just waiting now for a distributed system and open protocols to break down the walled garden. If Google would push that (as they pushed XMPP and federation with GTalk) then I think the momentum would help. As for Facebook, you know they WON'T push that kind of thing EVER. That's why I'm more likely to leave data with Google. At least they've shown evidence of a modicum of respect for privacy and open standards.

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[chowdahhead]

My ISP has always had poor spam filtering, such that I had to use my email client's message rules to keep my inbox clean. Now I use Gmail to pull email from my ISP and it does a very good job of weeding out the mess.

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[drcheap]

My other buddy did facebook correctly. He used part of his real last name for his first name, made up a fictional last name, and posts nothing.

How is that the "correct" way to use it? What benefit does he get out of having that bogus account that sits idle?

To me, the correct usage is complete non-usage -- as in not even signing up.

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[tayhimself]

Hasn't Eric Schmidt done the same at Google?

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not doing Facebook correctly. That's NOT doing Facebook. Why did he bother getting an account?

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[RocketRabbit]

He seeks out the people he wants to find. He's not interested in hearing from some long-forgotten third grade classmate. He simply wants to be able to connect with the people he chooses to.

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, I know one girl who accepts friend requests from anybody, and posts a lot of suggestive photos of herself.

What's her name?

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[RocketRabbit]

So he can look people up? I don't know if you ever used the Facebook "search" function, but it's there so you can look people up. How do you imagine people use it? Do they sign up for an account and then just sit back and never search for anybody, merely hoping that people will search for them?

The way he did it was ideal. Use Facebook as a way to get email addresses of people he wants to communicate with, and never post anything.

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, you must know your little sister's own name. Everybody else around town does.

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[Kozz]

FRIEND: what!? how'd you manage that one? ZUCK: people just submitted it ZUCK: i don't know why ZUCK: they "trust me" ZUCK: dumb fucks

Honestly, is this real, or satire? I can't tell, because 1) I swear I'd read it before, and 2) I wouldn't put it past him.

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[drcheap]

And by doing that he is now associated with those people, who have no concern for "correctness" in their usage of the service. He is now exposed and becomes a part of the tangle. Or something.

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's real.

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[MichaelSmith]

Incidentally I recently changed the email address I use for slashdot to notify me of replies. Two days ago I started getting SPAM to that address. I don't think I have leaked it anywhere. Its just on my server in a .qmail file. The only other possible way it could be leaked is that I am using POP to load those emails on my android phone. Posting about this just in case other people are seeing the same problem.

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[Chrisq]

My other buddy did facebook correctly. He used part of his real last name for his first name, made up a fictional last name, and posts nothing.

How is that the "correct" way to use it? What benefit does he get out of having that bogus account that sits idle?

To me, the correct usage is complete non-usage -- as in not even signing up.

Even better sign up accounts as "Barrack Obama" and "Sarah Pailin". In one talk about your conspiracy to make the USA an Islamic nation and in the other talk about how scientists plan to cross humans and monkeys and use them to replace the American population, and how handguns are a useful defence against global warming. The sad thing is you will get a few supporters as well as the troll-bait who argue against you.

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[Idiomatick]

If you didn't know the above 'interview' is actually a near perfect transcript of actual conversations that mark had in past. Google "fuck them in the year". The guy is seriously evil.

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[RocketRabbit]

It seems you know what is good for people better than they themselves do. Better strap everybody into your high-chair and spoon feed them your medicine!

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[zmollusc]

Blimey. My facetiousness was wasted, then. I feel a right berk.

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[drcheap]

Either you are passive agressively agreeing that I pointed out a flaw in your "other buddy's" plan, or you totally missed my point.

While he may not be directly identifiable by the information he volunteers, he is identifiable enough by what little & with whom he does communicates.

He doesn't want to be "a part of the system" yet he wants the "benefits" of the system. Can't have your cake and eat it to, because the cake is a lie.

Re:How about some V14GR4 in your facebook?

[RocketRabbit]

Identifiable? Perhaps, perhaps not. He just uses Facebook as a way to get email addresses, does not post his real name, and has a photograph with a partially obscured face.

Anyway, it's better than giving away tons of detailed information about yourself to an ethically questionable fuckbag like Fuckerman.

Facebook

[falldeaf]

I'm not facebook's biggest fan... I'm forced to use it more and more because of friends and family but if someone truly did consolidate IM, email, SMS, calling, voicemail and whatever else in a meaningful, easy to access way I'd be completely on board. Google is getting close but I still have to have two or three tabs open and some of it feels very tacked on. IM'ing in gmail for instance. I'd love to get a notification for any of them through the same system and a simple way to answer all of them back, too!

Re:Facebook

[johnlcallaway]

I've already consolidated all of this .. into email or IM onto my phone! Whenever I get any sort of message on several platforms, I get sent an email and both my desktop client and phone suck it all done so I can read it. The emails contain links so I can reply if it was on a message board somewhere.

That includes voicemail.....Vonage has had voicemail transcription for years. I can read it or listen to it, and then call that person back if I choose to.

So ..what's the problem that facebook is trying to solve .. beyond lining their own pockets with more advertising dollars, and filing their database with more data to mine.

Re:Facebook

[BitZtream]

I'm forced to use it more and more because of friends and family

Really? Forced? They hold a gun to your head and say 'sign into facebook right now and add me as a friend or I'll kill you'? I mean, that would be forcing you to do it.

You choosing to play the attention whoring game that is facebook and saying you're are 'forced' is just a cop out.

If your friends and family can't be bothered to contact you directly, they aren't your friends, they are just people you know.

You'll find GMail and its integrated inbox a lot more useful when you stop trying to use a web based client for IM and email. Web based is useful when you're away from your properly configured computers, but to use it every day shows you really aren't that heavy of a user.

Re:Facebook

[falldeaf]

No, you get notified for most of your services on your phone. I'm talking about a single unified interface for any of these services that can be answered through the same interface, both on a phone and desktop! The same way the pigeon IM client seamlessly consolidates multiple different IM protocols. Once the different protocols are set up, the user doesn't have to care which IM service they just got messaged from. Why not consolidate email, SMS, voice message and IM the same way?

Re:Facebook

[hedwards]

Well, to be fair, I can't imagine anybody volunteering to join Facebook. Seems like the same sort of people that go to the airport just for the free molestation.

Re:Facebook

[sgage]

You are not forced to use Facebook at all.

Re:Facebook

[falldeaf]

I respect your hardline attitude about the matter, you remind me or Rorschach from the Watchmen. I guess I'm just not prepared to tell my friends "Go fuck yourself. If you won't communicate in the way that *I* want, I'm not your friend!" Also, I'm a pretty heavy IM and email user. Your post shows that you have zero grasp of the important concept that different people like to do things different ways. (And that you seem like kind of an a-hole. But don't let that get you down, lots of important, neat people are aholes! :)

Re:Facebook

[falldeaf]

I was using it as an expression, no there's no one standing next to me and holding a gun to my head, you're right. But just like my cell phone, facebook brings good and bad things into my life. So I was lamenting the bad parts in my post. Way to be too literal. :)

Re:Facebook

[zuperduperman]

Are sure you actually want this? The thing is, the isolation of these services serves a useful purpose. They all carry their own social context and rules.

Email - probably not urgent, but get back to me in 24 - 48 hours please. Might have useful attachments, etc, handy for archiving stuff

IM - probably not urgent but handy if you can respond in real time for a quick chat

SMS - short and sweet, could be urgent or time sensitive, check it out as soon as you can, a one word response will quite possibly do. Don't count on it as an archive.

Having all these things merged would destroy some of the qualities that make them useful.

Re:Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

Grandma can get on facebook to see pictures of my kid from the other side of the continent. Grandmas old juno email address can't hold more than 3 images without going over it's space limit.

Gmail is great, and has a lot of great features. Now if only you could convince everyone in the world to use it when most of my family is non-technical and their email addresses end with @comcast, @charter, @att, or @juno. Facebook is their only portal so that's why I use it, and that is their power. They sucked up a lot of non-technical users that learn something once and refuse to budge.

Re:Facebook

[falldeaf]

That's actually a really good point. For the most part I follow those social rules. However, if the communication format changes you can change the social rules. You don't have to change everyone's behavior just your own. For instance, if I IM some of my contacts they respond when it's convenient and I just accept that and some others IM me back almost immediately 90% of the time or at least say hold on I'm busy I'll get back to you. I played the game second life for a short time and I remember there was this one guy that only spoke when he felt like it. He just showed up, never said hi or good-bye. Even though some people thought he was rude most people just accepted that that was how he communicated. It may have helped that he was super smart and interesting when he did decide to talk.

Re:Facebook

[RocketRabbit]

Actually a lot of people are pressured into using facebook. Most of the people I know who use it have been pressured into using it. My buddy lives in Japan, and he was pressured into using it by his family who abide in the USA. Other people have been "forced" into using facebook in order to keep a relatively accessible online presence for their small business, in order to connect with a client base. People hate getting email from businesses, because they see it as spam, but for some reason they love getting updates from businesses they "like."

You don't have to be a cock-in-the-ass about it, you know.

Re:Facebook

[icebraining]

Sorry, but that's _not_ the only valid use of 'forced'. Someone making you choose something you dislike because the alternative is worse is being forced.

Re:Facebook

[mattack2]

Wow, you're slow at answering your email! (Don't get me wrong, I have many many years of old email..)

We are all served

[PatPending]

We are all served by having everybody in the world get online.

FTFY: We are all served more ads by Google by having everybody in the world get online.

Are you using Facebook?

[Cruciform]

Seeing that this community has a lot of security conscious folk who is actually using Facebook?
I'm not. But if you aren't and you still do the "social networking" thing, what are you using?

Re:Are you using Facebook?

[ScrewMaster]

Seeing that this community has a lot of security conscious folk who is actually using Facebook? I'm not. But if you aren't and you still do the "social networking" thing, what are you using?

Not me. My idea of a "social network" is emailing, texting and phone calling my circle of friends and acquaintances.

Re:Are you using Facebook?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I use it. I move from project to project and meet new people along the way. We used to use LinkedIn but Facebook just sort of won, probably because people have fun posting funny stories.

I've found work that was as have a number of my colleagues. I've had a few good laughs along the way, too.

Re:Are you using Facebook?

[rwa2]

irc on our own private server with ircstats.

I'm in favor of this Facebook email thing. gmail / buzz always had more interesting users, and this will keep a lot of the chaff away from the wheat :-P

Also, true story: my grandmother calls me at a random airport to notify me that I might be on the same flight as my father's cousin. Haven't had a social networking thingie deliver that kind of notification yet.

Re:Are you using Facebook?

[Amorymeltzer]

Anyone who attended school in the past decade or so and actually made some friends there. I don't mean to be insulting, but rather to say that not everyone a slashdotter knows is also a slashdotter. Ten years ago that meant AIM instead of IRC, now it means Facebook.

Re:Are you using Facebook?

[flowwolf]

Ah that is scary indeed to think about. What would the world be like if grandma's were replaced by corporate networks?

Re:Are you using Facebook?

[Cruciform]

If you don't mean to be insulting maybe you shouldn't start out by insulting people.

Should I now insult you by saying that Facebook is so last year and maybe you need more timely friends?

You know what I discovered when I joined Facebook? That the majority of people I would want to be in contact with have accounts on there but don't actually use the site. They too got tired of watching others flood the timeline with Application feedback that you have to block on an individual basis, having to constantly check privacy settings, etc.

Twitter actually handles that well, in the form of lists. I can appease any number of contacts by adding them and then relegate them to purgatory by only viewing my managed lists, or @mentions.

It's still lacking in many areas but the 'obnoxious factor' is much lower than Facebook.

I'm curious to see how Diaspora manages information streams or how non-Americentric social networks are evolving.

Re:Are you using Facebook?

[istartedi]

I'm not using it, but it has nothing to do with privacy. It has more to do with not wanting to see half my highschool class drunk and metamorphosed into overweight soccermoms/cubejocks.

If I wanted to see that, I'd have gone to the 10 and 20 year reunions.

Oh, and Farmville. 'nuff said. FaceBook just has too much of an AOL, least common denominator feel to it. The privacy issue is just another thing that doesn't even make it onto the list. Before there can be a privacy issue with something, you actually have to want to use it.

Re:Are you using Facebook?

[BlindRobin]

No, I use little email as well. For real correspondence I still use stationary and a stamp. Yes I am a Luddite however I also don't say much unless I have something that is worth saying. Posting occasionally on Stroke Full Stop being an exception of course.

Re:Are you using Facebook?

[jshackney]

But if you aren't and you still do the "social networking" thing, what are you using?

My telephone. It's weird and antiquated, but it works fabulously.

For the record, I dumped Facebook about a month ago. Cold turkey. I basically figured out that:

1. People love drama.
2. I am apparently supposed to give a damn about where [you] ate last night.
3. and everyone loves a voyeur.

I had hidden so many people that I realized Facebook was worse than real life. Real life is like the school teacher who can send her kids home every night to their parents. Facebook is like being stuck in kindergarten 24/7.

Re:Are you using Facebook?

[Magada]

I used it. Saw all the ugliness from the inside out. No more for me! The minute someone invents some protocol that scales better and is more privacy-conscious than XMPP, Facebook and all other "social media" will be dead in the water.

Why would google care?

[peacefinder]

This appears to be a re-hash of Google Wave, which the big G already abandoned.

Re:Why would google care?

[Enderandrew]

Except far fewer features than Google Wave, it is a closed service, and Facebook will own all your private data. But otherwise it is just the same.

Re:Why would google care?

[JeremyGNJ]

Google should care....because of the huge boost this gives to Microsoft Office Online. Millions of users...instantly.

Re:Why would google care?

[Chris Snook]

This isn't Wave, this is the Wave killer!

He left out one thing..

[eebra82]

The market will grow but you need an e-mail to sign up at Facebook, and as such, some Facebook users will migrate from Gmail to Facebook mail. Therefore, the market is growing but Facebook will steal more than the growth that Eric is referring to.

Work access.

[Cuznmark1]

Well I can still access Gmail from work.. Facebook.. not so much..

Uh... how does it expand the market?

[Seor Jojoba]

Have we not yet reached a point where everyone that wants and is infrastructurally able to have access to e-mail, has got it? Are there a bunch of people that Google hasn't reached yet? Better start another GMail invite campaign, I guess.

Re:Uh... how does it expand the market?

[hedwards]

The reason for the invites was a combination of building a buzz and not wanting to swamp the infrastructure before it had fully stabilized. The only reason to start another invite campaign would be to have people spamming their friends. Probably not the sort of buzz that Google wants or needs.

Re:Uh... how does it expand the market?

[Amorymeltzer]

People in their middle-ages on up have a pretty low adoption rate, I find. They got on with some ISP 10-15 years ago, and haven't looked back, except to change their ISP and thus the email. Webmail is still foreign to a lot of people.

Re:Uh... how does it expand the market?

[gl4ss]

well, more people on the internet = more people watching google's ads.

they might lose market share, but it doesn't matter if more people use the services. funnily enough when the case is for google they 'care' about marketshare more than actual users.

Where is this e-mail everyone's talking about?

[siddesu]

I use facebook occasionally, and since Monday I've been looking for something that even remotely resembles a revolutionary and useful messaging interface.

I just can't find it, the messaging system I see is the same useless shit as it always was.

Are they enabling it on a per-user basis and skipping those of us who log into facebook less often than once in an hour?

Ah, tech reporters, will they ever tire of blowing up nonsense into "world-shaking" pseudo-news. This one is worse than Segway and iStuff combined.

Re:Where is this e-mail everyone's talking about?

[hedwards]

It's probably a limited roll out. Often times they do it in waves so that they can avoid hosing a lot of people if there's something which made it through the QA which shouldn't have. It's also a lot easier on the infrastructure.

Re:Where is this e-mail everyone's talking about?

[fishexe]

I use facebook occasionally, and since Monday I've been looking for something that even remotely resembles a revolutionary and useful messaging interface.

I just can't find it, the messaging system I see is the same useless shit as it always was.

To be fair, the "same useless shit" in facebook is far superior to the messaging system in Slashdot, which consists of looking up your friend's recent posts list, clicking one at random, then making an off-topic public reply.

Re:Where is this e-mail everyone's talking about?

[siddesu]

To be fair, Slashdot doesn't claim to be the next Internet.

Re:Where is this e-mail everyone's talking about?

[siddesu]

That was not what the news and announcements implied though. That shows how much reason is there to trust Facebook with your email.

/ Google too.

nice to see some warring tactics.

[hesaigo999ca]

I want google to really come out with something new that will again change the web as we know it, i think they need to review what everyone is doing and focus on something that will integrate with it, so if everyone was masturbating, develop a masturbator helper, if everyone is emailing joke emails, develop a special joke email format that auto adds a signature which is the joke of the day...

keep facebook on their toes.

Re:nice to see some warring tactics.

[hedwards]

I bet it's privacy. Nobody would see that coming.

Re:nice to see some warring tactics.

[flowwolf]

You can't do what is already done if you want to change the face of things as we know it. Before google, everyone was spending as much time as they could in their favorite portals. Google decided people should spend less time searching the web. This was contrary to what was being observed. They had a vision that was unseen so far. This is what real disrupting technology is. Not some trivial application

I can't wait for them to fully unload google voice on the world. TV could have a chance but i'm not impressed yet. Instant has changed the way I search dramatically already. They are constantly disrupting the market and this is what I love about them

Re:nice to see some warring tactics.

[hesaigo999ca]

I love them too, now if I could only get a job there, I would be really happy!

no thanks...

[bbqpope]

I don't see it. I use facebook, but anymore I have limited what I share and post there. I have been getting a kick out of being friends with people I see. I used to check facebook a lot, but anymore it's kinda dull.

Re:no thanks...

[SiChemist]

I have an honest question, so please don't take offense. What is with using the word "anymore" as a synonym for "now". You've used it twice in this post and I'm seeing it more frequently on forums and in e-mails. I'm not trying to be a grammar nazi, I really want to know where that comes from.

Several problems

[jav1231]

First, I have all kinds of convergence on GMail and frankly, don't care for it. In fact I rarely use the web client. I'm a throwback geek, what can I say. I do use the texting feature when I can't text from area with no coverage.

The big problem Facebook has right now is credibility. Given the myriad of accounts that are hijacked daily, the privacy issues, I can think of no other company I want my data to be on less than Facebook. Except maybe Microsoft but I like piling on Microsoft. :)

From what I can tell, it would take years for FB to get spam under control because they don't even have it under control on their site now. One reason I'm using GMail is because no other online email app rejects spam better.

Facebook can't rely on pretty colors and whirly thingies. They need to get their act together before branching out. Yes, Microsoft was able to branch out by spreading mediocrity but the world was a lot less tech savvy then.

Re:Several problems

[fishexe]

Yes, Microsoft was able to branch out by spreading mediocrity but the world was a lot less tech savvy then.

Also, they held the desktop OS monopoly back then too. Facebook doesn't exactly have a social networking monopoly, although they are better poised to achieve one than any other company. I think of it like the situation Microsoft was in back in 1982.

Re:Several problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Fastmail probably does a better job at spam control than anyone. And, if you go with a paid account, you can ratchet down the controls even further with sieve scripts. I don't know about you, but I'm a geek, and I like as much control over my environment as possible short of running my own mail server, which is a colossal PITA BTW.

Re:Several problems

[jav1231]

Ran my own mail, file, and web servers for years. Keep in mind, this was some time ago. I used a HW RAID controller and multiple SCSI drives and at one point an external RAID enclosure as well. They all made a lot of noise booting let alone running. One night the power went out for a bit. The room was so quiet. That silence, though, convinced me all that hardware was cool to build but at some point you want to simplify.

Re:Several problems

[the_humeister]

Yes, Microsoft was able to branch out by spreading mediocrity but the world was a lot less tech savvy then.

The world is still not very tech savvy, mostly because people are people. Look how well 419 scams and emails work.

Re:Several problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Microsoft was able to branch out by spreading mediocrity but the world was a lot less tech savvy then.

Do you really think that the world is MORE tech savvy now? Well, I suppose that all depends upon how you define "the world". In my view it is the part of the world actually using computers we should consider. And considering that the general populace now has access to and regularly uses computers there might be MORE tech savvy users, but on the average it is worse than 15 years ago when the computer users had interest and wanted to learn more about the systems they used.

If you define "the world" as being all humans, even those not using computers, I could agree with you that on the average we are more tech savvy now, but is that really interesting? People not using computers have little use for that "general increase in tech savviness".

Perfectly Secure

[retech]

I am confident that everyone will switch over in droves to ensure the security of their online communications. No doubt FB offers only the top most level of security with their email. Guaranteeing that they will never harvest data from it or sell/divulge your most intimate of secrets.

Re:Perfectly Secure

[mlts]

I can see this... but all parties would have to have PGP Desktop, or a similar utility to encrypt/decrypt messages, as well as a pre-established WOT.

This comes to mind something... Perhaps combine Facebook and Hushmail? Result, every object (status update, message) is encrypted with its own key, and the key be decryptable by users, groups of users, or everyone. This way, a break in, or a goof in the backend application wouldn't reveal any information that has not been configured to reveal unless the key storage/decryption system was massively smashed. It would not be completely secure, and definitely not from governments (most likely they would want a recovery key), but it would keep data well under wraps from almost anything else.

Oh joy.

[gklinger]

A solution I don't want to a problem I don't have from a company I don't trust. Great.

Re:Oh joy.

[mpfife]

And just like an Apple product - everyone will buy and use anyway.

Google?

[rudy_wayne]

Facebook's new messaging system may not be a Gmail killer

Here's an interesting graphic that surprised me. U.S. Internet traffic to Web-based email clients

#1 Yahoo - 72.8 million

#2 Hotmail - 48.5 million

#3 GMail - 25.1 million

Re:Google?

[pnuema]

You forget - Yahoo is the default email address for anyone who uses AT&T (formerly Southwestern Bell) as an ISP. No one else gets that kind of subscriber boost.

Re:Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

25.1 million what? The suspense is killing me...

Re:Google?

[rudy_wayne]

25.1 million what? The suspense is killing me...

Unique users.

It's funny how everyone talks about Facebook competing with Google, when Hotmail has almost twice as many users and Yahoo has almost 3 times as many.

Re:Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

It helps that Yahoo has one of the more draconian sets of privacy rules out there. Terrible as it may sound that they have (if memory serves) refused relatives of the deceased access to their former e-mail without a court order, at least you know going in that you'll never get an advertisement for Gillette after mentioning it in a mail.

Re:Google?

[shutdown -p now]

A more interesting chart would be the growth rates for these three.

Re:Google?

[giorgist]

| U.S. Internet traffic to Web-based email clients
| #1 Yahoo - 72.8 million
| #2 Hotmail - 48.5 million
| #3 GMail - 25.1 million

Yea well, that's what happens when you cut out the spam. That should teach Google

Re:Google?

[i_liek_turtles]

You also have to pay Yahoo to use a desktop email client. Gmail does that for free.

Re:Google?

[u38cg]

Now compare the demographics. What's the market share of young people with disposable incomes? And how are they changing?

Re:Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

You also forget, gmail allows POP, IMAP, and ExchangeSync (ActiveSync?) so why would you use the web-app?

Re:Google?

[aaaantoine]

One of these three allows free IMAP/POP3 access and mail forwarding, allowing you to completely circumvent the web based client. Guess which one.

Google's "nightmare scenario"...

[DdJ]

If I understand the presentation I saw, one of the things this Facebook tool will have going for it is, it'll be an IMAP client. You can punch in the details of your mail server, and use it as webmail for that service. Like, embed SquirrelMail in Facebook.

If Facebook can convince users to punch in the details for GMail's IMAP server, reading their GMail mail via Facebook instead of the GMail web interface, then Google runs the mail infrastructure, but Facebook gets the ad impressions. Remember, if you access GMail via IMAP, you see no ads at all. (I use GMail via IMAP, from several desktop and handheld IMAP clients.) If that started to happen in any volume, I bet Google would wake up and notice.

Re:Google's "nightmare scenario"...

[ADRA]

Until Google decides to block Facebook IMAP harvesters for the same reason they did with the address book sync squabble. If facebook integrates mail from Google/others, why aren't facebook messaging services (send and receive) available from external sources?

Google doesn't JUST make money off the presentation of ads in their web interface.
1. They scrape the data to better utilize advertising to you when you're logged into other Google services
2. The analysis of your email/etc could allow for better heuristics to detect interesting patterns (I'm thinking about things like Goog411 as an example of this)
3. They could trivially put a rider on email provided through IMAP for any ad that they would normally host through the web page (with slight complications on the AdSense billing side, but not unmanageable)

For me, I rarely open my web mail tools anymore because my Android phone always notifies me of incoming email almost instantly. I usually just use the web interface of GMail to type out large emails that are unmanageable from the phone, or when I'm hunting for some old mail.

Re:Google's "nightmare scenario"...

[aliquis]

Yeah, but considering Facebook track record in privacy, secrecy and usable options for the same do I want them to read my e-mail? No.

Re:Google's "nightmare scenario"...

[takowl]

Well, it would be no great leap for Google to add that feature themselves. They've been able to act as a POP client for some time now, sucking in e-mails from the accounts people have with their ISPs, mainly.

And I like GMail's interface. Facebook would be doing pretty well to beat Google there.

Re:Google's "nightmare scenario"...

[IamTheRealMike]

Actually, I think they intended Facebook to become an IMAP server. You can already set up forwarding from Gmail to your @facebook.com address once it's up and running.

Re:Google's "nightmare scenario"...

[Xarius]

Considering that Google doesn't even let Facebook import contacts anymore, there is nothing stopping them blocking IMAP access from facebook.com.

Re:Google's "nightmare scenario"...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh shit!

I hate convergence

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't give a fuck about receiving my email in text messages.
Convergence is not fucking revolutionary. It's what you do when you can't think up something better.

trust my private and professional mail with Zuck ?

[unity100]

hahahahahaha.

sorry, no dice. zuck is trustworthy and reliable for me as much as ... well, brutus maybe ...

Nothing new here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.
—Jamie Zawinski

Except in this case, it's a web app instead of a program...

Oh for mod points...

[Anonymous Coward]

That interview joke apart, the points parent poster makes are right on.

Re:Oh for mod points...

[RocketRabbit]

The interview part was not a joke. That's what Fuckerberg actually said. I merely changed a few things to reflect the power Facebook has now.

I already have convergence

[Is0m0rph]

It's called an Android phone.

Google flinch?

[intellitech]

Google doesn't flinch.

Sorry.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not letting my e-mail within 5 cybermiles of Facebook and their privacy policy.

unintended consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhhh, the unintended consequences. So, how are facebook users going to like all the spam they get?

Also, potential employers will get a golden ticket. Essentially, a short path to finding a prospective employees embarassing photos. Titties!

Re:unintended consequences

[ProfessionalCookie]

So, how are facebook users going to like all the spam they get?"

[Like]

I don't see the issue...

[Mysticalfruit]

Realize who this service is aimed at... When these people joined facebook they gladly handed over passwords for all their email accounts and instant messaging services. Now all this stuff is going to be done in house.

At this point, if you've used facebook and you haven't been completely neurotic about what you're exposing, they've got a very good handle on who you are, who your friends are, what's in your inbox and what's in your friends inbox.

Those of us, who want to keep our privacy won't use this service. That other group of people have already lost their privacy, they just haven't realized it yet.

Blackberry

[Lehk228]

my blackberry already merges my SMS, email, facebook and IM messages.

Google hosts ISP mail through Google Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure Google uses Google Apps to host ISP mail. The ISP retains control over the e-mails.

So if you trust your ISP, you should be (almost) golden.

AOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes because centralized integration worked so well for AOL.

Of course Google didn't flinch...

[Tetsujin]

It's natural that Google wouldn't flinch. On the contrary, they were probably quite courteous.

"Thanks, Facebook, but we have plenty of blow already!"

Ok, wtf is inbox.com?

[rsborg]

I've heard of all the others but this one puzzles me.

Do you have a combined "inbox"?

[rsborg]

Ie, gmail, sms, work mail and IM all in one thread?

This offers that, in one sense. I think @facebook.com will fail, but it's not the same as your iPhone/Android... now if Google released a (limited) wave client that was a mobile app... :-)

Re:Do you have a combined "inbox"?

[lightversusdark]

You are talking about BlackBerry.
I've moved to Android, but there's no denying that RIM have got integrated communications right.

Re:Do you have a combined "inbox"?

[Radish03]

I use an app called "SMS Backup" which uploads all SMS messages I send and receive from my Android phone to my GMail inbox with a custom label (default is "SMS"). They show up properly as conversations between me and my contacts (To and From fields appropriately link to the correct contacts since the address book is shared between phone and GMail). I've found this extremely useful when I can't remember if I said something to someone via email, Google Talk (which already logs chats in GMail) or SMS, since a GMail search will find it. I suppose some may have privacy concerns with Google logging all their SMS, but I think this behavior would make an excellent addition to Android/GMail to keep GMail competitive with what Facebook is doing as well as to make GMail more attractive to "casual" Android users who only signed up for GMail as a requisite to getting an Android phone.

facebook nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

who uses facebook? not me!

FaceBook Has more to worry about now a days.

[Anonymous Coward]

If Facebook is going to become top dog of the internet they should be first focusing on the customer support. As there are thousands of users who are currently "locked" or "blocked" from their accouns for one reason or another. I am one of them, I have been waiting months for a reply and a fix. I just made a second account, and re friended everyone telling them that I am locked out of my other account. No its not a problem with something I did, as all I did was add my mobile number to my account, I recieved the confirmation text and entered it into the page, and was able to log in once. Now when i try to login, it takes me to a page, where it tells me I need to verify my mobile number and to enter it. When I enter it, it tells me that my account has already been verified, and takes me back to a login page where I start the circle again. I have other friends whos accounts have been disabled for some unknown reason, Facebook is asking them to prove they are who is trying to log in, and asking for certin credentials, Which they are minors, and do not have said credentials. Me being the tech savy guy of our click, they come to me for help, unfortunatly there is nothing I can do to help them until FaceBook gets a better customer relations system. They need a tech support, FaceBook looks good for some, until they fall into the darkness of the facebook problems, they will continue to believe facebook is good. FACEBOOK SUCKS when it comes to solving problems that is brought on by the sites scripting errors.

Way I look at it

[rikkards]

When I submit my cv for a job do I really want my email address to say @facebook.com?

Didn't think so.

Re:Way I look at it

[Chrisq]

When I submit my cv for a job do I really want my email address to say @facebook.com?

Didn't think so.

Even worse, when they look up your profile and see all the "pictures of you" taken by friends at that party you'd rather forget. It happened to me, its really embarrassing. How was I to know that going to the local tea party wasn't going to involve a nice cup of Earl Gray, buttered scones and Jam.

Employees And phishing

[ieatcookies]

I wonder if they'll change the employee email domains to differentiate them from users. I bet phishing skyrockets at first.

Re:trust my private and professional mail with Zuc

[Anonymous Coward]

But Brutus is an honorable man!

been blocking them for ages now

[Torvac]

doesnt it bother anyone that fb can track you everywhere you go, and even worse than google can combine your tracking data with your friends ? i mean im a data freak and this gives me soo many evil ideas. i could do wonderful things with this data.

Repeating Pattern of Seperation

[pinkushun]

-> Geeks alienated by Plebs
-> Geeks created intertubes
-> Plebs try to use Geek intertube technology
-> Plebs ignorance exploited and pulled into grand unified messaged scheme by Facebook
-> Geeks create their own uber comms network while alienating the Plebs
-> Profit!

Killer feature suggestion to facebook to make

[cheekyboy]

1. implement a 100% clone of ebay, ie expand marketplace
2. clone also amazon but with 10000 3rd party shops using facebook 'walletbook' or something thats in partnership with american xpress to KILL PAYPAL.

This is their $$ future .

speaking of Govt Paid Pedofiles

[cheekyboy]

Someone should organize a DOS TSA PEDO day.

Bus in and taxi in 100,000 people to go through security , everyone refusing xrays.

Have every one go through Feel em Up Security , but wear no underwear or bras. Do it with a wimper sad face.

All the TSA guys will have nightmares and mental problems and quit.

I bet they love coming home, "how was your work dear?"
" oh great, I felt up 12 old men, 34 grandmas, and 98 little girls between the legs, loved it!"

Oh and do the DOS thing wearing german flags with tshirts saying "HITLER WON and TOOK OVER USA"

This is my page:

[KlaymenDK]

I would much rather be using my Appleseed account, but take a guess how many of my non-technical friends (and their friends (and their friends (...))) are even aware of there being an alternative.

Oh yeah, I eschewed Facebook for a very long time, but it became almost painfully awkward. I ended up posting a story on the subject, which after much ado can be summarised thusly.

The following is the total content of my Facebook page. I don't have a "wall", I don't upload photos, I don't play games (apart from the open-ended game of "let's see how they fucked my privacy settings this week"). It's a read-only account, so I can at least *try* to be part of the loop in this new social landscape.

Q: What? You here? I thought you hated Facebook?
A: "Hate" is a strong word; let's say "dislike". Social networking, as a concept, is great. What I dislike is this implementation. So yeah, I did. I still do.

Q: Why?
A: Because I've become increasingly aware of the fact that, in this day and age, not having a Facebook account is like not having a phone 20 years ago. It's perfectly possible to live like that ... but you won't have a clue what's going on around you.

Q: But where's the rest of your info?
A: Right where it's always been. You want to know something, you just get in touch with me.

@facebook.com == @aol.com

[spasm]

Seriously. Getting an email from someone with a facebook.com address is going to be about the same as getting an email from someone with an aol.com address - it'll be a convenient shorthand for "I'm a clueless idiot". And I say this as someone who uses facebook daily.

Re:trust my private and professional mail with Zuc

[SiChemist]

*golf clap*

And besides

[Geminii]

"It didn't work when we called it Google Wave, either."