If you are a person who doesnt like to store your data on Facebook, much less other peoples site’s, then that solution will fail…and for allot of other people. I can understand your dependence and passion for using this one site for your source of cimmunication, but its one of many my friend. Such a solution needs to work across ALL WEB SITES. Thats why these social network solution will never become defacto standards for doing anything online, beyond drawing traffic and winning online popularity contests for groupies.

That leaves about 4 billion people right now around the world who still use traditional email, and NOT Facebook. So, dont go selling these subscription sites as the end-all-be-all of online messaging and communication. Facebook is just one domain out of millions of social networking sites that are trying to draw eyeballs for advertising purposes. Nothing innovative there. Granted, its one of the top most popular but it isnt solving the critical problms we have with email and personal data storage on the Web. Neither is Google.

A viable solution to email still remains to be found…..

Add a little finesse to messaging, and sure, I’m game. Throw up the walls!

but i agree, starting to see a pattern of behavior shifting.

great blog btw. and i think i like the background highlighting on your links… it was a bit odd at first, but then i realized it’s a very strong call-to-action highlight. (altho maybe a slightly light yellow could be less jarring / still effective). anyway, it’s neat

Right now, they’re are two things standing in the way of Facebook’s Inbox really going wildfire as an email alternative… #1. The app isn’t ready. It needs to be as full-featured as, say, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, or Gmail. #2. Not everyone is on it.

Those are both easily surmountable, though. #1 is easily achievable with Facebook’s engineering team (or, if they get bought out by someone else who already has an email app.) #2 is already underway. They’ll soon hit 50 million people. Somewhere in that range is likely the tipping point.

Why would people switch? Because there’s no spam in the Facebook Inbox. It’s pretty powerful when the only people that can email you are people that you’ve given permission to email you.

Of course, in order for this to work as a true email alternative, Facebook will have to ditch the 1000-member silencing of groups. (Which is, btw, stupid. People can un-join a group if they don’t like what they’re getting from ‘em.)

For years, people have been trying to solve the spam problem. Facebook has — they just need to realize it.

I use Facebook’s mobile website all the time from my Motorola Q smartphone: http://m.facebook.com. It’s not quite as easy as email, but I wouldn’t describe it as painful.