New Facebook Email and Messaging System

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces new email, messaging system

Facebook faceoff: Designers weigh in

Bill Moggridge, left, director of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, praises Facebook's 'laid-back' design. Paddy Harrington, creative director of Bruce Mau Design, takes an opposing view.

Washington Post Staff

Monday, November 15, 2010; 11:59 AM

Facebook announced a revitalization of their messaging system and new e-mail addresses for users. As AP reported:

Facebook unveiled a new messaging platform Monday that takes aim at one of the Internet's first applications, e-mail. Although blogs had been speculating that Facebook would announce an e-mail service to rival Google Inc.'s Gmail and others, Facebook said e-mail was just one component of its plans.

Facebook's announcement Monday afternoon which many speculated could be the launch of a Facebook e-mail service. As Cecilia Kang reported:

Facebook's announcement on Monday, 1 p.m. EST is expected to be a new e-mail service, among other communications tools, according to the New York Times. This is significant because the social networking titan, which is breaking nearly every metric on the Web (time spent, traffic, news dissemination, display ads) could capture part of the market for a massively important app for desktop and mobile devices, one currently dominated by Google and Microsoft. Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder, told Post Tech that one way to identify the most important information platforms is to look at those that people visit most often and on which they are most engaged. Some examples, Hughes said, are Facebook, Twitter, e-mail and an an assortment of "longtail" sites catering to individual interests.

The Post's Melissa Bell weighed in on Facebook's announcement:

While some users may be excited to embrace a mail service on Facebook and quit with their e-mail providers that are chock-full of Facebook notifications, others may not be ready to give Facebook access to their mail service, thus handing over another piece of their personal life to a social network dogged by privacy complaints.

Speculation has been swirling that Facebook's blue and white site design might also be revamped. As Blake Gopnik explained:

It's a safe bet that no image in history has been viewed as many times, as intently, as the basic Facebook page. The company claims that its 500 million users spend more than 10 billion hours every month looking at that blue-and-gray Web site. In her five centuries of existence, Mona Lisa has not been ogled as much. She must be jealous.

She shouldn't be. Popularity is one thing; beauty is another. No matter how many friends Facebook may have offered up to you, the truth is that your page is ugly.


as posted by the Washington Post Staff Online