Facebook opened up their very closed email platform today by allowing users to add normal email addresses in a message. Previously you could only send messages to Facebook friends. Now you can add in others, too.
This is great news for people who use Facebook for most or all of their emailing. But for those of us that use normal email for our day to day business, getting Facebook messages is more of a problem than a feature. That’s because Facebook makes you log on to the site to read messages/emails from your friends. They’ll send a note to your normal email address when a new message comes in, but they make you log on to Facebook to actually read it.
I rarely do that, and have missed some important messages from people trying to contact me. As a next step, I think Facebook should offer to forward the actual messages to an outside email address (and/or provide a password protected RSS feed). Eventually Facebook should offer full POP or IMAP support for their email. They can still restrict it so that you can only receive messages from friends, but at least you could access it from your desktop or web based mail application.
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Michael,
If Facebook allows users to access emails outside of Facebook, I imagine that the site would lose some of its relevance? Then again, it could gain even greater relevance. After all, people might still go to Facebook to interact with groups. I wonder in what medium the largest percentage of communication takes place: walls, discussion forums, or private messaging? I’m just thinking aloud.
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HON MRS. JOY EGOBIAREPRESENTATIVE UNITED NATION INTERNATIONAL MONITORY FUND (UNIMF)E-MAIL: joy_egobia@yahoo.com
ReplyReply All Move…Inbox
You’re right, I don’t know if it would be enough to attract people or if someone’s already done it, but it seems like a pure whitelist style email service might be worthwhile.
I use MySpace and while I hate logging in just to check messages, I do love that for the most part I know the message is from someone I don’t mind hearing from. It’s hard for me to believe that someday some competitor won’t stop forcing users through those hoops.
This is great as after my little sister told me that she “only uses email to talk to old people like me” i was a bit insulted.
http://www.web-strategist.com/.....ld-people/
Now we can merge both worlds!
Andrew - how about if they at least forward the actual email to my normal email address so that I can read it without logging into Facebook? That would be a good start.
Heaven forbid that you have to actually go to, enter name and password, just to get your email???? WOW…….that’s a grueling task. Facebook should take care of this, and serve you eggs benedict every morning as well.Who knows, perhaps FB can end the war in Iraq as well. Funny.
This is a great move for Facebook.
Andrew - I know from my previous consumer research and user interviews at eBay that our subjects from MySpace and Facebook (dem: 17-24) that they all heavily relied on the messaging platform from both sites.
This means that it works in the favor of Facebook as the feedback we received spoke to the simple fact that users were bypassing their email accounts (AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail) and relying on platform messaging (private messaging, walls, discussion boards) the majority of the time.
Platform member/users will reach out from within to those people not on the platform using the relative email addresses.
Michael, has a point. I use email forwarding now with a couple of my addresses and the only thing not inline with that is Facebook private message forwarding. The people need choice and I believe Facebook will be exploring this in the near future, if they aren’t currently doing so already.
Facebook is about facilitating information through the appropriate channels to help you understand the world around you better. Openness is part of that facilitation.
You know mike should’ve pick important topic like Mylivesearch.com.
They are opening
World Wide Public Beta Launch
Wednesday, 29th August 2007
Some of these comments are ridiculous.
I personally agree 100% with Arrington. Being forced to login to read your Facebook messages is a pain, a waste of time, and unnecessary.
I am tired of receiving messages in my email box that say
“X wrote something on your Wall.
To see what X wrote, follow the link below:
http://annoying.facebook.com/n.....ssary#wall
Thanks,
The Facebook Team”
A bit more integration. I see no problems with sending me my real messages. That is what email is for. This is just a way to inflate their daily page views, and thus increase marketing revenues, but creates zero value for the user.
Tim McCormack
iRent2u.com - The Online Rental Marketplace
The issue with the “why don’t they just include the content in the emails” suggestion that everyone is throwing around lately is that people then assume they can reply to these emails and the content will magically get sent to the back to the sender and not “info@facebook.com” or whatever it is. No matter how big you write “DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL”, people do not understand, or don’t notice, or don’t care. I’ve learned this from experience on http://isitnormal.com
This can be designed around, but it involves building a relatively complex email system. One that creates throwaway email addresses and handles receiving, parsing and routing of email. FB’s engineering team is certainly capable of doing this, but it’s not a trivial task. The decision may not be purely motivated by “page view greed” like everyone makes it out to be.
I agree. Facebook should simply become a full email service provider.
As a service that monetizes it’s TRAFFIC, it’s easy to understand why they want you to login every time. Maybe while you’re there you’ll notice your sweetheart from high school has changed profile pictures, then maybe write on a couple more walls while your at it…it all makes perfect business sense.
Why should Facebook relay your messages around for you, especially via POP or IMAP when it has no means of monetizing that kind of traffic?
Whatever. Facebook doesn’t play in the real world. Nice they have social networking and the demographic but they are not a bizapp. They will flutter out.
yes lets just fold the entire internet INTO facebook and then .. what have you got? you’ve got the internet, badly implemented.
No thanks..
Facebook is a cute but simple closed system, that strength is also its weakness.
@11 “!agree. Facebook should simply become a full email service provider.”
Yea! That’s exactly what the world needs. Yet ANOTHER email service provider.
I don’t know about the whole full service thing, but a good handful of sites send the message to you. Twitter does, Flickr does, Pownce *just* added this feature.
Doesn’t matter if I have to log into reply, although I’ve been burned writing replies and sending ‘em off to a noreply@whateverwebsite e-mail address.
You guys are all living in 5 years ago.
“…great news for people who use Facebook for most or all of their emailing.”
Er, do these people actually exist? Can we expect a forthcoming Duncan post on how Facebook is The Death of Email?
“…getting Facebook messages is more of a problem than a feature… and have missed some important messages from people trying to contact me.”
Um, generally when I find a site =negatively= affects my life, I stop using it for said purpose, let alone touting it. You might want to stop and ask yourself if you’ve had just a wee bit too much of the Kool-Aid.
The anti-Facebook commenters are getting really entertaining and they make good points!
Back to Facebook, I truly believe if they had offered an open email system from the beginning they would have locked in all those college kids transitioning from institutional email addresses.
But I guess we’ll get to see what happens as they take baby steps towards a truly open platform, step by plodding step.
Actually having to go to facebook to get email is a pain. They need to allow me to read the email via a secure RSS or pop mail…
Well, this is a step in the right direction for the masses. It also draws more people into facebook in the mean time. So we can bitch about it all we want, but it will not make us stop using facebook. I am sure this is a deliberate move and eventually they will do the right thing.
It is true that people under 25 tend to think email is old school.
Rodney Rumford
http://www.facereviews.com
After using Outlook for my personal email for most of the ’00s I switched back to using Yahoo’s web-based email a couple of years ago and I don’t miss the client-side experience one bit. Web-based mail is infinitely more convenient and portable.
Got me thinking that it would be cool if someone developed an email widget for FB that lets me read my ymail (or hotmail or gmail for that matter) on FB. Even better if I could route all my Facebook messages through it to consolidate everything in one place.
Maybe this app already exists on FB?…its getting difficult to tell with all the spammy apps that try to trick you into installing them.
@Michael Arrington
Actually, there’s a slight error in your original post. Facebook doesn’t require that you are friends with someone to send that person a message. (To test this out, search for a random name and then click “Send Message”, there ya go.)
In fact, this functionality is the only reason Facebook messages seem worthwhile at all.
Let’s get back to the basics, here - what purpose does a Facebook message serve? It simply allows one user to send a block of text to another, and it omits many pieces of basic functionality provided by *real* e-mail - attachments, headers, html, CC and BCC fields, etc. It doesn’t tie into the site in any creative way, except that it is accessed through the Facebook interface - which certainly doesn’t seem like a significant benefit in the age of tabbed browsing. The only reasonable purpose for a Facebook message is to communicate with someone whose e-mail address you don’t already have.
Someone, please, tell me why you would ever send a Facebook message to a friend instead of an e-mail. Think of the precedent we’re setting here, every site creates a wrapper for e-mail with some key features missing. All this does is create a bunch of clutter.
Except, of course, for Zuckerberg and co., who get page views for every Facebook message sent and read. That’s purely what this is about; no more, no less.
@Arnie
Along with my comment #21; why would you want to read all of your e-mail inside the Facebook universe? What purpose would that serve for you? I really just don’t get it. Is the goal to make Facebook a true portal? I can certainly envision a world where Facebook becomes an RSS aggregator, an IRC client, a WYSIWIG editor, a blogging platform, etc etc etc — but I just don’t see the draw.
Dave - regarding your last paragraph - Facebook has shown a willingness to sacrifice page views for usability on a number of occasions. They are/want to be a platform, which means making some sacrifices for usability. Given how much more people would use facebook email if they opened it up, I think it would be a big net win for them.
Dave, because using a system that requires an email address to it, means that you will always guarantee getting a message. If I send you a direct message on Twitter, I’m fairly positive that if you’ve turned on ‘to email’ notifications, it will get to you (because generally that email has to work for lost passwords and such).
And your email is unknown to me, spammers, etc.
For everyone else, this isn’t a Facebook issue, just GIVE US the message and a link to it on the system. It’s not rocket science and we’re not claiming to cure all teh Serious Business on the internets.
Just a silly little thing. Just do it. It pisses off the users.
Have any of you actually USED this service before shitting on it?
You get the full message in your email inbox! You do not have to log in if a message is sent to your email address. Otherwise, how could you log in if you are not a member of Facebook and receive a message? Go ahead and try it out. Quite a novel idea, no?
Thanx for the tip!
Hope this new feature help the community grow.
Saludos,
Ric.
Something like the private message boards of Elance et al would work well: You see the entry on the private message board as an email sent to you as well as an entry on the the private message board. (i.e. You don’t just get the ‘Someone has sent you a message’ email that you get from Facebook).
You can then reply directly from your email account to the message, and the reply is added to the thread on your private message board that is hosted on the respective site (like Facebook messages).
The current Facebook system is almost identical to this, it just doesn’t include the text of the message in the email that it sends. You would think it’s no great leap for them to add this functionality.
Jack, it does.
The way it currently works:
Facebook message to Facebook user = email notification without the text. Have to log in.
Facebook message to non FB user/email address = email with FULL text of the message. No need to log in. No need to be a FB user.
So it appears Facebook is halfway there.
fred wilson says similar things about wanting to be able to update his facebook status from twitter (of course he does…the guy led the latest round in twitter). facebook is happy to open up when it allows more companies to feed information into or drive traffic back to facebook’s platform. the strategy seems fairly obvious to me. so as for the various requests that have been made recently, here are my predictions:
1) No, facebook will not support POP or IMAP. They will continue to drive the users back into the facebook platform. When/if a competitor forces them to support e-mail standards, they will do so, but not before then. Why should they?
2) No, facebook will not support a twitter API that allows you to update your status from twitter. that would provide a layer of abstraction between facebook and the user and legitimize twitter beyond the techcrunch 50K. like #1, they will only do this when twitter enters the mainstream. until then, they will not support twitter. why should they?
3) No, facebook will not support the universal social graph effort that was blogged about recently. if they did so, they would lose the massive switching costs that they have created through their service. why would they do that? they will be the last social network to join this effort and will only do it because if they don’t they will become irrelevant.
In my case, as Mike A. says, I am just fed up with having to log into a website to message people, so I’ve mailed all my F/B friends an “email me” message.
btw is it just me or does anyone see a lessening in activity on Facebook?
Quite the opposite Alan. I am seeing greater activity from a wider circle of friends.
I hate that Facebook sends me an email to tell me to login an view what happened. Why can’t they just send me what someone wrote on my wall instead of making me login to view it.
@alan p
I agree with the lessening activity as explain on my blog:
http://www.blakebrannon.com/20.....ts-glamor/
SMS. Facebook mobile allows you to receive your messages via SMS. While this is not a viable option for users with thousands of friends, for its core group it is an excellent service.
It’s 2007.
Facebook does not have the same set of problems as your average Web2.0 startup, and they cannot be in the business of forcing its users’ hands.
If they’re trying to change the world and be the most important show in the valley, their focus has to be on providing not merely a good user experience, but a profoundly great one. I know that sounds a little crazy, but they’ve done it to themselves. If they want to do something that none of us have ever seen before, then they have to do it.
Part of that profound user experience includes NOT sending me hundreds of emails over the last 3 years completely devoid of any content whatsoever. I have no problem with having to login to reply, I’m just very tired of these completely pointless emails.
How about them adding just a couple of useful features to messaging, such as, say “sort inbox”? The messaging system is such a clear throwaway feature it’s painful to even use…
Shouldnt it be the other way around? Your email from all your accounts being forwarded to Facebook?
Seems the core demo of Facebook use Facebook as their way of communicating rather then email.
I dunno man, I don’t mind that my facebook messages don’t end up archived in email accounts all over the place (or my gmail account forever). Lets me feel free to say things which someone’s boss might not be so happy to see.
Exactly @ Ryan.
The Facebook generation (pre opening up) favor Facebook messaging over email and use it far more. Absolutely no question.
This is a good move by FB.
From a marketing standpoint, Facebook may have taken a step forward, a very small step. From a personal perspective, I think it is absolutely useless for me to use Facebook as an email provider. It is unnecessary and it takes away from the whole idea of messaging for those who find that messaging/posting on walls are the primary form of communication on Facebook. Facebook should be looking at more innovative ways of how people are interacting or communicating with one another rather than simply tossing an email client into their platform.
The email app will have to change to be useful to any of the new people who are crowding on to Facebook. I, for one, am not going to stop what I’m doing to log into their site every twenty minutes to read an email. To me this is a non-answer to the issue.
Larger issue: I don’t think Facebook is aware how far they have come from their original demographic, and what the new demographic really wants. This is going to be an interesting next six months.
There is a plugin (application) in Facebook called “Email Me Instead” that is supposed to allow people who send you messages, to email you instead, taking the conversation outside of Facebook into the email space.
While I have it installed, none of my friends have used it.
TODOS LOS DIAS TENGO PROBLEMA CON LA CONTRASENA ANTES NO ERa asi AHOR LLEGUE AL LIMITE DE CONTRASENA Y ME BLOQUEARONM MI PAGINA POR FAVOR Q PUEDO HACER. GRACIAS.
small gang kristi