Facebook as expected announced "Facebook Messages" yesterday, a service meant to consolidate all of your online communications into one place and provide you with a more social communication platform. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's co-founder and Cheif Executive Officer, says he got the idea after talking to high school students a few years ago. Claims are that young people have e-mail accounts but don't use them very often and while I'll buy that, having two teens myself, I don't see business rushing to Facebook to host their corporate e-mail, nor do I trust Facebook with my serious communications. Sure I use the site, as do a reported 499,999,999 others, but let's face it, Facebook has a less than stellar reputation with keeping our data personal and I don't see this as an e-mail killer as stated by some analysts.
“They just made it so much more compelling to center my communications on Facebook rather than anywhere else,” said Charlene Li, an analyst with the Altimeter Group. “Google, Microsoft, Yahoo should all be worried.”
Really Ms. Li? You truly believe that we all want to dump Gmail in favor of a site that now will let us send our most important communications and play Farmville... btw, I'm glad I didn't invest in all of the 'great' ideas had by high school students. But then again, I'm no Mark Zuckerberg and time will tell whether Facebook Messages compels us to waste more time on his site and push Facebook's user base to greater heights.
Read more about the launch at NYTimes.com
