Facebook Announces Messaging Product

So the big announcement at Facebook was made on 15th November. Widely trailed, as email for Facebook the announcement was more than that. The idea is that all your communications on every medium are all stored and managed in one place. Instant messaging; SMS; email it doesn't matter what the technology used is.

Seamless Messaging Product

"Today I'm excited to announce the next evolution of Messages. You decide how you want to talk to your friends: via SMS, chat, email or Messages. They will receive your message through whatever medium or device is convenient for them, and you can both have a conversation in real time. You shouldn't have to remember who prefers IM over email or worry about which technology to use. Simply choose their name and type a message."

Does this mean the end of spam?

One of the major concepts of the seamless messaging is the idea that messages from your friends or your friends friends are more likely to be real than the ones from unknown email addresses.

Does this mean that we will no longer receive messages regarding buying the medications you need or from banks we don't even have an account with? It would be great if this was true.

Messaging Prioritisation.

The concept also means that messages from close friends and family are prioritised higher than your reminder from your utility company or your bank statement. Again any help in filtering and prioritising is a major plus.

Archive kept of all messages.

The history of all your messages are to be kept and archived for the future, like the analogy used of letters in a box. The archive is does not even care about the type of messaging technology used.

The future of Messaging

I have to say that the original hype of this product being a "Gmail killer" meant that the focus of the product was more to the traditional messaging paradigm, I however think this is a far more important product than that.

The problems that have beset the internet with Spam, phishing and other scams have made it a scary place for many people. This is the area that I think Facebook are after. They are moving toward the position of being the Internet passport.

It can be used to remove the scams and control your access to the products and services on the internet. The Social aspects of Facebook can only go so far and as more companies start sending status updates to your page it will become unmanageable as these are continually refreshed.

The Future for Facebook

Facebook needs to redefine what is does and I believe this is the first step into it becoming an infrastructure company, and it will be the infrastructure of identity and access.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out in the coming months and how it is received by the Internet users.

Based on everything that it happening are we now entering another war on the Internet. There was the browser wars - is the first salvo in the "platform wars"


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