Facebook Announces New Messaging Platform

By Ellis Hamburger

Originally published in LEAD Magazine

November 15th, 2010

At 1PM Eastern Time today, Facebook announced a brand new messaging platform that “is not an email killer,” according to CEO and Co-Founder Mark Zuckerberg, but is a “messaging system that includes email as a part of it.” Internet media sources speculated that Facebook would simply give users an @facebook.com email address, but instead, Facebook decided to create a new platform that blends texting, instant messaging, Facebook messaging, and email into one cohesive package. Zuckerberg hypothesized that today, he sees “a subtle shift towards real time, simpler communication,” and the new platform enables you to get in touch with your friends, no matter where they are, and no matter what service they’re currently logged in to (such as Facebook, Gmail, or another email account). The “big problem with email,” according to Zuckerberg, is that you get a lot of things you don’t want. The new platform has one simple goal: to reach your friends as quickly as possible without having to sift through the things that aren’t as important that often get mixed into your email inbox.

Zuckerberg views the new platform in terms of “conversations” with your friends, similar to the way Gmail threads messages into conversations with your contacts, except the new Facebook platform also has some traits in common with texting on mobile phones. You will use an @facebook.com address to communicate using the platform. You view your conversations in a “social inbox,” which only includes messages from people you are friends with; other messages “such as bank statements,” Zuckerberg says, are reserved for another inbox within the platform. This other inbox is for things you “care less about,” and for things you might only care to check on once a day, whereas you’d probably check your social inbox very frequently. The new platform puts a very high priority on communications with the people you care about the most, not dissimilar to Gmail’s new “priority inbox” feature.

The platform boasts several enticing features, such as the ability to receive messages on whichever device you are currently using. If you are logged into Facebook and are chatting with somebody, you will receive the messages on Facebook, but once you leave the website, you can opt to receive these messages on your phone. Another feature is the platform’s ability to integrate with other messaging systems such as Jabber (AIM, Adium, etc.), IMAP email accounts, and more (although IMAP support will not be immediately available). It seems that the walls between instant messaging and email are slowly falling down, but “there is no need to shut down any of your other email accounts,” Zuckberg noted. He hopes that the new platform will not necessarily replace email, but will become a pioneer in a movement towards a new kind of digital communication that revolves around the people you care most about.

Facebook engineers have spent more than a year scaling up their messaging systems, and Facebook plans to roll out the new platform “over the new few months.” Facebook is releasing the platform on an invite system, as Gmail originally did a few years ago, but will eventually invite the public to jump in. The company plans to give users a “genuine control” over how they communicate with each other, and only time will tell if they can succeed in launching a new platform in the midst of so many other compelling communication solutions.