Rumour has it that Facebook is finally looking to upgrade its archaic and flagging web messaging platform to something that will meet at least the basic needs and expectations of today’s webmail users.
Known internally as “Project Titan” rumour has it that there will be full POP/IMAP support, meaning users can access the account other than through Facebook itself. The Facebook account will allow Facebook members to create an email with the address joecitizen@facebook.com
Given Facebook’s advantage that has been created via Facebook Connect this potentially a powerful consumer application as Facebook reports that more than 60 million people log in to 80,000 third party websites each month via Facebook Connect. This creates a pretty amazing identity platform to drive take up and usage of a fully fledged Facebook webmail product.
Further, anecdotally it seems that Facebook messaging is increasingly overtaking other email options as a primary means of communications between friends and groups who are already on Facebook i.e. people are already using their Facebook accounts to “mail each other” rather than other work or personal email when they are communicating with their friends who are on Facebook.
That said we don’t think the folk at Gmail should be too worried just yet as we think the likely result in the short term is that most people (who are on Facebook) will have both a Facebook mail and Gmail (or other personal webmail account such as Apples Me.com or Microsoft’s Hotmail) account to manage their personal communications.
If the current trend continues then its likely that these people will increasingly use their Facebook mail to stay in touch with their Facebook friends and use Gmail / Me.com / Windows Live for everyone else (or when they need integration with more sophisticated apps such as calendars, maps etc)
This trend when combined with the ongoing efforts of employers to discourage employees from using their work email for anything other than work related communications – and the increasingly common and high profile cases of dismissal for breaching these conditions – suggests the real impact that a fully fledged Facebook webmail service will be to accelerate the separation of professional and personal online identities – for good.
Whereas work and ISP mail accounts have significant restrictions on use and are only available for as long as you work for that company or subscribe to that ISP, freely available cloud based webmail services such such as Facebook, Gmail, Me.com or Hotmail are almost completely free of restriction on use and are unlikely to have a use by date any time soon.
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