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i currently have this set up, so i must be one of the very few thats ben allowed to test this service out, every message i get on facebook, also ports directly into my email...as well as facebook, messenger. i mainly use the contact back and forth, rather than the messenger, and often directly reply through my facebook email...pretty nifty, can go anywhere and carry on the conversation.
MICHELLE
Thursday, Feb. 10, 2011
Facebook set to invade the e-mail market
- San Jose Mercury News
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Facebook fans hungry for a facebook.com e-mail address, get ready.
The much-ballyhooed Facebook Messages, where e-mail, text messages and instant messages are linked in a “social inbox,” will be offered to a majority of the more than 500 million Facebook users over the next two months.
“The reason we’re taking our time with it is we’re not starting from scratch. We’re starting from being one of the top messaging systems on the Internet,” said Andrew Bosworth, the Facebook engineer who leads the team that, with extensive input from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, developed the new Messages product. “This is a new product with 500 million existing users.”
The much-ballyhooed Facebook Messages, where e-mail, text messages and instant messages are linked in a “social inbox,” will be offered to a majority of the more than 500 million Facebook users over the next two months.
“The reason we’re taking our time with it is we’re not starting from scratch. We’re starting from being one of the top messaging systems on the Internet,” said Andrew Bosworth, the Facebook engineer who leads the team that, with extensive input from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, developed the new Messages product. “This is a new product with 500 million existing users.”
Messages was launched in November, amid media buzz that it would be a “Gmail killer” that would render traditional e-mail obsolete.
Initially, however, Facebook gave relatively few people access to the new product. Over the past two months, the Palo Alto, Calif., company has been painstakingly moving existing content over to the new service, a transition that will ultimately encompass more than 100 terabytes of data — or about half the total digital archive held by the Library of Congress.
Bosworth said Facebook software has been checking every character within every message, scanning for discrepancies as each user is switched over to the new service, and assigning an engineer to manually check every error it discovers.
“We have billions of messages in the existing system that we have to move over to the new system,” he said. “These are intensely meaningful, personal messages that people expect to have access to, and we have to do this with some care.”
The new service treats every communication between people as part of an ongoing conversation that began with their first interaction on Facebook — a string that in many cases goes back for years. “Facebook is not just about what’s happening right now; it’s also the history of what we’ve done before,” Bosworth said.
The system is intended to allow people to carry on a single conversation over a variety of devices, perhaps starting an interaction on e-mail through their office desktop computer, then moving to text message on their phone as they head outside, or moving into instant message as they come back to their office PC.
Zuckerberg took a direct role in shaping the new Messages product, starting with a series of conversations with a group of teenagers during a Thanksgiving break in 2009, where the younger people told the Facebook CEO that they favored text messages because e-mail is “too slow.” “That was the catalyst,” Bosworth said, and his team held extended weekly meetings with Zuckerberg through spring 2010 as it built prototypes of the new service.
Messages has not been universally well received by analysts, who say it is not functional enough for business and other uses.
Initially, however, Facebook gave relatively few people access to the new product. Over the past two months, the Palo Alto, Calif., company has been painstakingly moving existing content over to the new service, a transition that will ultimately encompass more than 100 terabytes of data — or about half the total digital archive held by the Library of Congress.
Bosworth said Facebook software has been checking every character within every message, scanning for discrepancies as each user is switched over to the new service, and assigning an engineer to manually check every error it discovers.
“We have billions of messages in the existing system that we have to move over to the new system,” he said. “These are intensely meaningful, personal messages that people expect to have access to, and we have to do this with some care.”
The new service treats every communication between people as part of an ongoing conversation that began with their first interaction on Facebook — a string that in many cases goes back for years. “Facebook is not just about what’s happening right now; it’s also the history of what we’ve done before,” Bosworth said.
The system is intended to allow people to carry on a single conversation over a variety of devices, perhaps starting an interaction on e-mail through their office desktop computer, then moving to text message on their phone as they head outside, or moving into instant message as they come back to their office PC.
Zuckerberg took a direct role in shaping the new Messages product, starting with a series of conversations with a group of teenagers during a Thanksgiving break in 2009, where the younger people told the Facebook CEO that they favored text messages because e-mail is “too slow.” “That was the catalyst,” Bosworth said, and his team held extended weekly meetings with Zuckerberg through spring 2010 as it built prototypes of the new service.
Messages has not been universally well received by analysts, who say it is not functional enough for business and other uses.
