Facebook Upgrades E-Mail

Facebook is seeking to replace e-mail with what it calls a “modern messaging system” that combines all the ways people send messages — including e-mail, IM and SMS — into a single interface.

Assualt on Gmail?

The new system, Facebook Messages, was announced Monday. It allows you to simply click on a friend’s face, type a message and hit Enter. Facebook handles the rest. And it comes with an optional “facebook.com” e-mail address. But a new e-mail address isn’t the point. Rather it is the unification of a variety of means of communication. Instead of grouping conversations by threads or organizing them chronologically, Facebook’s message system sorts all messages between two people into a single, long thread.

That means you see every message sent through the system to a friend or boyfriend in a giant stream every time you open a new message. As for inbox filtering, Facebook will show messages from a user’s Facebook friends on the main page, while messages from people not in your social network are shuffled into another mailbox.

The system will get smarter over time, so that even people you aren’t friends with on Facebook, but communicate often with, will show up in the stream. While the system may not convince hard-core e-mail users to switch their messaging life into Facebook, the always-on, centralized system could prove to be highly popular with Facebook’s core crowd of youngsters. It also ties Facebook users even closer to the Facebook system, so that the site becomes even more central to how they communicate, plan and cultivate friendships.

Read more here (source wired.com):
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/11/facebook-modern-messaging/