Monday, November 15, 2010

Facebook Unveils "Next Generation" Messaging

Facebook's new "Messages" feature is going to strike many observers as a unified communications tool, not an "email tool." Messages allows a Facebook user to decide how they want to talk to your friends, using text messaging, instant messages, chat, email or "Messages."

Recipients receive a message through whatever medium or device is convenient for them, and you can both have a conversation in real time. That's interesting.

"You shouldn't have to remember who prefers IM over email or worry about which technology to use," the Facebook blog says. Simply choose their name and type a message. The program appears to thread all conversations, no matter which channel is used.

"Messages is built for communicating with your friends, so it made sense to organize primarily around people," Facebook says. "All of your messages with someone will be together in one place, whether they are sent over chat, email or SMS." You can see everything you've discussed with each friend as a single conversation.

Facebook also is providing an @facebook.com email address to every person on Facebook who wants one. Now people can share with friends over email, whether they're on Facebook or not.

"Messages is not email," Facebook says. There are no subject lines, no cc, no bcc, and you can send a message by hitting the Enter key. We modeled it more closely to chat and reduced the number of things you need to do to send a message. We wanted to make this more like a conversation.

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