Facebook is putting the finishes touches to a new email service that will be integrated with its existing chat and messaging feature.
Founder Mark Zuckerberg said the new release will be a “modern messaging system” including, but not exclusively dependent upon a “@facebook.com” email service.
“This is not email. Email is one way to use this system, but we don’t think it will be the main way,” Zuckerberg said.
“This is not an email killer. This is a messaging system that includes email in it,” he added, saying he didn’t expect users to ditch their email accounts — despite reports the social-networking site had internally branded the system a “Gmail killer”.
Zuckerberg said it was based on instant messaging rather than the more “formal” email. If you’re online and logged into Facebook, messages will immediately show up in chat, while if you’re mobile, messages will head to your phone.
The system will use friend lists as a white list to filter out spam, using a three-folder system for organising communications. Messages from Facebook friends will automatically go into a main folder, while a second will hold less personal messages such as newsletters or bills. Anything else will be dumped into the third — essentially a junk mail folder.
The service will roll out over the next few months, initially on an invitation-only basis, bit will eventually be open to all — a Facebook account won’t be necessary.
[Additional reporting by Nicole Kobie. Photo: Mark Zuckerberg by Jakob Steinschaden; some rights reserved]
