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May 8, 2008

Facebook Email Gets Better With Search

Michael Arrington

32 comments »


Facebook’s webmail platform is so inefficient that even minor changes (like adding the ability to send to outside email addresses last year) can make a big difference in usability.

They are now adding basic search functionality to email (see screen shots). Previously there was not way to find emails other than scrolling through the pages one by one. Some users have thousands of emails in their inbox, so old messages became essentially unfindable.

Only some Facebook users have this feature now. It will presumably roll out to others shortly. And while there is still a lot more to do to make Facebook email really usable, but this is a good start.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 8:20 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Tyler Wright

    May 8th, 2008 at 8:48 am

    I’ve been waitin for this - so this is chawesome news…

  2. Titanas

    May 8th, 2008 at 8:53 am

    It was about time.. phew!

  3. Azhar

    May 8th, 2008 at 8:54 am

    Wow, it took them lot of time. Better late than never.

  4. Ben Kessler

    May 8th, 2008 at 8:55 am

    Wonder if they just threw this together after your last post Michael. If so, that’s awesome.

  5. Randy Ksar

    May 8th, 2008 at 9:04 am

    “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

  6. Christopher Ricca

    May 8th, 2008 at 9:07 am

    A quick note on the search - it allows you to search for conversations by a user’s name (using auto-complete), not by the content of the message.

  7. Andrew

    May 8th, 2008 at 9:07 am

    can’t wait to read the post about how facebook allows you to click browse, find image and then upload it to your profile.

  8. John S.

    May 8th, 2008 at 9:10 am

    The “Search Inbox” text implies to me that some kind of folder support is on the way.

  9. Huh

    May 8th, 2008 at 9:11 am

    Why do you continue to insist on calling messages within social networks email? For most people there is a huge disconnect between what gets sent via facebook message and what gets sent via email. Only “power users” who try to make facebook something its not (try linkedin instead) are the ones missing the point of facebook’s messaging system.

  10. John Ryan

    May 8th, 2008 at 9:12 am

    It was about time. But this is a significant achievement (keeping in mind that it is pretty hard to get it right in the first launch) since only the big names (Google, Yahoo and MS) have this feature. This is probably what takes Facebook closer to be deemed a utility. Hopefully Facebook would be posting more details about it from an architectural perspective.

  11. BCK

    May 8th, 2008 at 9:18 am

    I got so Pissed with Facebook email (if you can call it that) that I totally stopped looking at it, people know if they need to NOT try to get me through facebook seeing as how I hardly ever use it

  12. Cindy Szponder

    May 8th, 2008 at 9:23 am

    Can’t wait ’til it appears on my screen. The email function in FB is a clunker, but FB itself is so worth putting up with it. I’m still fairly new at FB, so guess I missed out on the earlier, even more clunky, versions of the email. Hope they keep moving forward in this area.

  13. Mike

    May 8th, 2008 at 9:26 am

    I’ve requested this as a suggestion so many times. I’ll add it to my tab of also requesting global groups and a few other features. At least it’s finally here.

  14. John Ryan

    May 8th, 2008 at 10:20 am

    As a senior engineer from a leading Search company in the Bay Area I can vouch that this is not a trivial problem to solve.

  15. Charles Whaley

    May 8th, 2008 at 10:29 am

    I agree that Facebook email sucks big time. It really shouldn’t be called email at all, because you can’t send email to anyone on Facebook from a normal email client.

    Adding search is nothing more than a token addition.

    Let’s face it… as massive as Facebook is as a social networking site, it’s designed for 10 year olds, has the worst user interface on the web, and relies almost exclusively on 3rd parties to add functionality (for 10 year olds).

    Whenever I see an article on “Facebook for the enterprise” I laugh out loud!

    I know it releases the inner child in all of us, like jumping in a puddle after a rain storm, but where is the value?

    Charles P. Whaley
    PhD, Psychology
    Toronto, Canada

  16. Cyrano

    May 8th, 2008 at 12:22 pm

    What about IMAP or POP3 support? Can I download to Outlook?

    Oh wait, it isn’t email.

    Until I can type cyrano@facebook.com and send a message to it, this isn’t email. It’s a PM function, just like they have on messageboards.

  17. Azeem

    May 8th, 2008 at 12:48 pm

    When you get invited to an event, whether you have accepted or not.. you can get bombarded with private messages from the admin of that event. Thats the crap that fills up my inbox. I wish those messages were somehow separate than my actual messages. Its like FB Spam. But definitely a search feature will help, hopefully they will also have an advanced search feature where you can search by users.

    And I agree thats its not email its private messaging with limited email functionality.

  18. New York City Wedding Photographer

    May 8th, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    Facebook needs to develop a much better method of organizing and retrieving your mail. This new feature is a step in the right direction, however, as a whole the interface is still a testing ground. Once these interface issues are addressed, I think more small businesses and entrepreneurs will begin integrating facebook with their existing online marketing efforts. But that just my .02 cents.

  19. Sam Purtill

    May 8th, 2008 at 2:12 pm

    OMG. FINALLY.

  20. JasonH

    May 8th, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    Searching email is nothing more than a simple database query, so this was probably not about a technology hurdle. Rather, the slow expansion from internal messaging system to full blown email could be some arrangement with Microsoft and encroaching on the live hotmail mail service.

    When you get this big the only technology probs are scaling with speed, all of the rest is political.

  21. Me

    May 8th, 2008 at 2:19 pm

    Facebook does not offer email.
    Facebook does offer its own closed-in personal messaging system.
    Its like saying Forum users have email accounts because they can send each other messages via pm
    Sure they can get Notification via actual email but you cant send mesages using imap/pop3/smtp

  22. Me

    May 8th, 2008 at 2:21 pm

    *Smpt is whats used to send emails
    *pop3/imap is whats used to receive them
    my bad

  23. John Smith

    May 8th, 2008 at 3:06 pm

    Hey Arrington,

    Nice to know that your hitting on college kids being in the apple student group! thats just awkward in so many different way..

  24. Gabe

    May 8th, 2008 at 4:24 pm

    Facebook has email?

  25. Larry Chiang

    May 8th, 2008 at 5:21 pm

    I can’t find this search box

    Need to leave this computer
    @me thx!
    @cyrano smart ass

    personal fact: I have zero unread facebook private messages vs 40,322 gmail

  26. ineedhits online advertising

    May 8th, 2008 at 7:52 pm

    Its suprising they didn’t just launch with this feature…/

  27. Lara

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:15 am

    Looks great! about time too =)
    i wonder when they will role it out to everyone

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