by Sangeeta Deogawanka

Created on: November 29, 2010

Facebook's all-new social inbox, with a @facebook.com email address for its users, is all set to storm the world of social messaging. This latest offering from Facebook, dubbed 'Facebook messaging', comes currently with an invitation-only availability; and is a complete messaging and sharing platform that seeks to bring all your networking under one roof. With this, Facebook moves another step towards what seems to be its ultimate goal, a future one-stop online communication venue that precludes the need for other email accounts, web addresses and online hangouts.

The Facebook blog says it all. "If you're like most people, you may have a few stubborn friends who haven't joined Facebook…yet. This can make reaching friends complicated—there are some friends you can send a Facebook message, and others you have to email. Not anymore. Now, when you're writing messages, you can send the message to people on Facebook, and to people not on Facebook. What's more, you can send invites for events and groups to friends on your contact list. A glitch that remains useen, the friend needs to sign up to get on discussion boards and wall posts". 

With its seamless integration across email, IM and SMS, and a conversation history that prioritises your email or messaging history with a friend or client, this is a whopper in a world converging towards a virtual cloud and net based platform. 

Built along the lines of a complete messaging media that addresses your social and business needs of communication, the Facebook social inbox is just what it claims to be, your mailbox containing all your messaging in a boundary-less interface. 

Facebook messaging service has a few stand-out features. A conversation history attribute maintains a continuous thread of dialogue for each person or group of persons. Even allowing for deletes, it is a virtual file on record for your business or relationship dialogues. 

Perhaps its most unique feature is the filtering element that further personalises the social networking character, filtering and prioritising messages. This enables you to separate the wheat from chaff, segregating messages from people you care about from legitimate but insignificant messages. 

A folder to store what you value or what you need to look up later, is not much different from what already exists on Yahoo accounts, despite Facebook's hype as being the only one-of-its-kind feature.

While the launch of the Facebook social inbox was accompanied to plenty of media hype, touting it as a would-be email killer, this maybe considered more of a landmark step towards a future seamless media in cyberspace that tackles all your communication needs under one comprehensive platform, rather than a Gmail or email killer! 

Although historically, Facebook does not have a rock-hard reputation when it comes to user data and privacy, it hasn't exactly curtailed users from sharing an enormous amount of information. So centralising of different communications on the Facebook social map will mean more of time spend on the site by users, by increasing number of users. With additional feature of mobile alerts, it is sure to invade the personal space in a significant manner. However, despite the fanfare accompanying the release of the Facebook social inbox and messaging service, it remains unclear how users with the same name are going to have the @facebook.com address, and how Facebook or apps developers follow it up with an integrated user-friendly service.

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