Facebook Messages Puts the Private Back in Public

“Facebook e-mail” puts the private back in public

Earlier this year, I read a column about how several colleges and universities were no longer distributing email accounts to new students.  The rationale behind this was that the majority of millennials are plugged into social media sites like Facebook, and these “instant gratification” users think email is too slow.

Email is too slow?  Makes you wonder if this new generation of users even knows what “snail mail” is!

Facebook has already rolled out so many new features this year; users are still focusing on forming “groups” and trying not to get lost navigating “places.”  Now, they’re giving us another inbox to check!

Or are they?  According to the brainiacs behind Facebook’s new email strategy, their new “messaging” system will deal with the dilemma of having to communicate with different people through different channels.  In essence, it will do the thinking for you… so you only have to send your message one time, to one place.

Let’s say you’re sending a “grand opening” event invitation to your contact list.  Do you send it through email, SMS, Facebook or all three?  This new feature promises to answer that question for you… you send out the message via Facebook and it figures out the best delivery route for each recipient.  So, while a 21-year old may receive your announcement instantly via SMS, a 51-year old customer might receive an email.

In true Facebook fashion, this new feature will extend well beyond email.  In addition to the seamless messaging, it also promises to keep a conversation history.  This will be a log of all communications you’ve had with a contact, regardless of the platform used.  Not to worry, they’ve also come up with a feature to delete the history entirely from their server.

Your new “social inbox” will even come equipped with fancy filtering features; since Facebook already knows who your “friends” and “friends of friends” are, they’ll prioritize those messages over ones from spambots.  It even designates an “other” folder for the non-social stuff like bank statements and automatic payment reminders.

Visit Facebook messages to learn more about what they’ve got planned.