Facebook Mail: Possible Gmail Killer?

Facebook just announced their new “modern messaging system” which they don’t want to call email although in effect, that is what it is,  as now you can have your own @facebook.com email address (and the official facebook staff will now have @fb.com email address).

So what exactly are its features?

1. You can control who can send you messages using your privacy settings.
2. Seamless integration between chat, mail, and sms. This means all your conversations which are fragmented between different channels, are saved in your inbox as a conversation (kinda like gmail conversation although that separates chat with email).
3. Filtering your email based on your social graph so that you receive mails from your social circle in a different inbox and the messages from unknown addresses, in the other inbox.
4. Spam will be invisible.

You can read more about facebook mail in the links given below. But I think this service is going to deal a fatal blow to the existing email services even though Mark Zuckerberg claims to be not competing with Gmail or Yahoo. Here are the reasons why:

1. There are already 500 million users of facebook. Facebook simply needs to show one single ad and there will be a few million facebook email users in a matter of days out of which a large percentage will start using it as their default email. This means mass exodus from Gmail and Yahoo. They will become as irrelevant as Hotmail became to many of us some time back when gmail was launched.
2. Spending time on Facebook and checking their email are 2 things that consume most of the time people spend online. With Facebook email, it will just be about spending time on Facebook since now they will get their email there too. No need to go to another website to check your email. You get your notifications right here on facebook.
3. Since you have more control over who can send you mails, this will even be ideal for businesses who would like to receive as little spam as possible. That said, facebook is laying stress on projecting this system as an informal messaging system without a subject line. I have a feeling, they will change that in a few months time.  I also think this will start giving competition to linked-in eventually. Why? Because to get in touch with someone on linked in, you first need to take their consent. I can see parallels in this system to the one in linked in.
4. As people will send out emails from their facebook messaging system, the people who receive the mail are likely to join in too since according to facebook, they will be able to see the photos and the profile of the sender. More of monkey see, monkey do will lead to more people joining facebook and then eventually its email service.

Prediction: If used intelligently, this can prove to be a great boon for business owners who, by giving out their facebook email address to their prospective clients might just be able to bring them to their social graph on facebook and build solid relationships with them which might pay off rich dividends in the long term!

Conclusion: If this application turns out to be relatively bug free and doesn’t have too many problems, then all I can say is RIP Gmail.

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