Is Email Facebook’s Competitor?
Posted by Nick O'Neill on October 19th, 2007 10:58 AMYesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece questioning whether or not social features in email will help drive traffic back to email. The current trend is away from email and toward social networking sites including Facebook. I am personally experiencing a similar trend. Last month I highlighted the fact that Facebook needs to upgrade their messaging system. I’m hoping that this is one of their priorities currently.
Seb Chan argues that casual email users “are already logging in to a website regularly to ‘check their email’ so it is more efficient for them to use login to a social networking website where they can do the same email check and keep track of their friends.” I couldn’t agree more but in order for me to use the social network messaging features more frequently than my email system, Facebook (and other social networks) will have to ultimately build an email client within their site.
While it is a far stretch for many of theses sites, rumors abound that Facebook is working on their own email client. People have been crying for an upgrade to their messaging system including the ability to search through messages. The real question is if Facebook launched an email system, would people shift from their existing email provider? Would you?
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October 19th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
I think many people would shift over to Facebook if there was an email-client. For me it would be convenient too, as I have to communicate far more with people not being members of Facebook than among my FB-friends.
In my opinion email out of Facebook would be a unique tool of marketing and promotion that might bring tons of new users into FB.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
If FB email client had all the features of my current client which is Yahoo Mail, I'd definately switch.
October 19th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
I think many people would shift over to Facebook if there was an email-client. For me it would be convenient too, as I have to communicate far more with people not being members of Facebook than among my FB-friends.
In my opinion email out of Facebook would be a unique tool of marketing and promotion that might bring tons of new users into FB.
October 19th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
If FB email client had all the features of my current client which is Yahoo Mail, I’d definately switch.
October 21st, 2007 at 12:31 pm
I've already made the switch. I am willing to go through the growing pains of using a “simple” messaging system to get back to basics and really discover
(1) what I miss (ie. search) and
(2) use cases that may only be apparent in the space of a social networking site (ie. some kind of object graph by contact or community)
There is peace stepping away from email (seemingly cold turkey) and move towards a paradigm that is able to scale regardless of how fast your network grows!
thanks for the article - been looking for positioning for the stance many of us are taking!
October 21st, 2007 at 1:31 pm
I’ve already made the switch. I am willing to go through the growing pains of using a “simple” messaging system to get back to basics and really discover
(1) what I miss (ie. search) and
(2) use cases that may only be apparent in the space of a social networking site (ie. some kind of object graph by contact or community)
There is peace stepping away from email (seemingly cold turkey) and move towards a paradigm that is able to scale regardless of how fast your network grows!
thanks for the article - been looking for positioning for the stance many of us are taking!
November 18th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
in Korea, only old people use email
November 18th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
in Korea, only old people use email