
Facebook quietly ends email address system - MaysonL
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26332191
======
the_watcher
One really interesting thing about this: When I speak with my Facebook rep, he
has brought up time and time again that Facebook basically believes email is
fundamentally broken. They keep saying they are going to remove the offers ad
unit (which derives most of its value from sending an email to the users sign
in email address), because they see email as something people feel obligated
to deal with. There's a clear focus within the company on becoming the default
communication medium for the internet. Their attempt to purchase Snapchat and
now the WhatsApp purchase seem to back that up too.

Not really commenting either way on whether or not it's a smart strategy, just
that it's been interesting to think about while watching their decisions.

~~~
loceng
Aside from the NSA liking that, and a lot of foreigners not trusting that, a
lot of people in general have a distaste for Facebook. There are many reasons
for this, which means there are many reasons why Facebook can collapse. What
they say believe and the lack of understanding of how to apply a solution
practically keeps being mirrored by Facebook's behaviours.

------
Nux
Trusting Facebook with anything is a bad idea. They have no obligation towards
anyone to do anything, except for their shareholders.

People come and go, the email system stays, eventually outliving Facebook,
too. :)

I wouldn't be surprised if they'll make a U-turn and offer email again in the
future.

~~~
superuser2
>They have no obligation towards anyone to do anything, except for their
shareholders.

This is true of every for-profit enterprise. Why direct it against Facebook in
particular?

~~~
Silhouette
That is obviously not true. For example, as soon as you have a contract with a
for-profit enterprise where you are paying them actual money, they have
legally actionable obligations to you in return.

~~~
superuser2
Any private company will stop entering contracts for a particular service the
moment that those contracts stop benefitting shareholders.

The societal value (portability, privacy, openness, etc.) of a product doesn't
stop anyone from withdrawing it the moment it stops being profitable. This is
what I take to be parent's issue with Facebook in this case.

To continue doing something because it's good for users (even when it's not
good for shareholders) you need a nonprofit or a government (or very
altruistic shareholders.) USPS is an example of this - it's not profitable to
serve rural areas at such low prices, but the government does it anyway while
corporations won't/can't.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
This is not about a product not being profitable, but about an alternative
strategy being more profitable, and an open system does indeed discourage
choosing the alternative strategy, precisely because it prevents a single
actor from being able to withdraw the product from the market.

With email (well, email before people were stupid enough to use gmail), if a
single provider withdraws their email offering from the market, that does not
really have much of an effect on the system as a whole, the affected users
just switch to a different provider and email overall just continues to work
as it always did - which in turn should discourage companies from withdrawing
their email offerings in favour of their proprietary offerings, as they would
expect people to switch to a different provider rather than to their
proprietary offering.

Well, in practice, though, people just seem to be too stupid to understand
such basic economic realities as network effects and the effects of
monopolies/dictatorships/other concentrations of power and what the long-term
effects of those are, and so facebook and twitter do actually have users, so
something about that theory must be wrong, I guess.

~~~
bad_user
With email it all boils down to owning your email, on your own domain, with
Gmail no less, speaking of which people had yahoo.com and hotmail.com accounts
long before Gmail. And if you don't own the email address, it's painful to
make a switch, though much less painful than switching from FB to something
else.

There is a big difference between email and FB - people depend on email on a
daily basis, especially for work. When 2 people exchange contacts, what do
they exchange? Their phone and email of course. Do you give out your FB or
Twitter handle to people?

Email is reliable, everybody has an email address and everybody with an email
address can communicate with you. My father doesn't have the patience to be on
FB, he can barely use a laptop or his phone, but he does use email.

My point is - these new platforms for communication will never replace email
and I also believe that because of the lock in, FB and Twitter and G+ will
never be so relied upon as to be irreplaceable. This lock in these bring is
also their weakness.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Yeah, the problem with gmail is not gmail itself, but rather its success. If
everyone/a majority/too many people use(s) gmail, that puts google into a
position where they would be able to change the system unilateraly, that is
why I think it's stupid when people, in particular people who should know
better, use gmail. Well, plus the fact that google has plenty of motivation to
hinder privacy in emails because their business case is built on reading your
emails, which makes it all the more scary that they could get into a position
to dominate email.

Other than that: Oh, I hope you are right! But don't underestimate network
effects - people were also stupid enough to let Microsoft lock them into word
documents, which indeed were practically irreplacable for quite a while, and
to a degree still are.

~~~
Silhouette
I find it reassuring that Google tried to do something similar before, when
Google Groups attempted to take over Usenet, and people using real newsgroups
had little time for either Google's "replacement" or for people who were
accessing Usenet via Google Groups and thought everyone else should/must be as
well.

~~~
bad_user
Not sure what you mean, but Google Groups is basically enabling ... mailing
lists. So we go in circles, back to email.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Google groups was based on Google acquiring DejaNews and building a usenet
archive and interface on top of that - mailing lists are a later addition. The
usenet interface was (and I guess still is?) terribly broken, making it a pain
for other usenet users to deal with posts from google groups users, because it
simply works in a way that hinders interoperability with the rest of usenet.

(And while at it: The mailing list feature is also quite defective, obviously
built by people who don't really have a clue how email works.)

~~~
bad_user
OK, I understand what you're saying. I'm not really familiar with the history
of Usenet and Google Groups it seems.

And for mailing lists it could be better, but as a user of several mailing
lists of various open-source projects, I have had no problems.

I am noticing that Google doesn't work in our interests though. For example I
am disappointed by their shitty support for IMAP, CalDav and CardDav.

------
the_watcher
I never figured out what their thought process was with this feature. They
didn't offer a traditional inbox, and there was no real effort to educate
users on how the "Other" inbox worked. They rolled the @facebook.com email
addresses out as the default public email address, which suggested they had a
plan, but they never went any further.

~~~
11001
@facebook.com was supposed to make people feel that all their electronic
communication needs can be met by facebook. I'm guessing, it turned out people
didn't mind that much logging into both their gmails/hotmails and facebook.

~~~
cbhl
I personally think that people _did_ mind, but they minded the fugly messages
interface even more. Every HTML email had to open in a modal pop-up because it
would get messed up by Facebook's internal styling.

------
teddyh
I would think that this is their attempt to kill the very _idea_ of e-mail. In
their world, everybody has Facebook, _period_.

~~~
yeukhon
From the WhatsApp's acqusition to closing down Facebook Messages, I think his
talk back in 2010 makes sense.

 _" We don't think modern messaging system will be email," he noted, saying
that he believes seven characteristics that we will come to define "next
generation" messaging: seamless, informal, immediate, personal, simple,
minimal, and short._

([http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/15/facebook-email-
addr...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/15/facebook-email-addresses-
_n_783697.html#s182605title=Email_SetUp))

He hasn't given up his dream of becoming the leader in mobile, seamless
messaging/communication.

~~~
denibertovic
Why does every definition of new future super cool messaging system imply
"immediate". I quite don't like that. Not everything needs to be a chat and
immediate.

~~~
fredsted
Well, why _not_?

Just put your phone in your pocket when you want to stop replying immediately!

------
frik
I want to see the _real_ email addresses of my friends (again).

~~~
pasbesoin
Also my thought: Are FB going to "unbork" all the displayed email values that
they automatically and without user opt-in switched over to instead display
these @facebook email addresses?

To me, it seemed an obvious ploy to keep user and their friends further
captured within FB. Want to contact a friend out-of-band? Well, now (i.e.
then) even though that friend chose to make their email address visible to
you, you effectively no longer have it; you instead have this FB email address
that forces you to remain within FB for this communication and until you
manually request and receive that friend's "real" email address.

Now, supposedly emails to that FB address will silently forward to the
person's "real" (registered) email address. You still don't, in these cases,
actually have that address; everything still passes through FB, and you are
dependent upon FB doing the right thing (or not) both morally and technically
in forwarding your email on.

I'm not saying they won't. But the whole endeavour has become a mess that
apparently stemmed out of the business' self-interest -- as opposed to the
user's interest -- in keeping users "trapped" within its domain.

P.S. And would they do so _correctly_ , reverting displayed addresses where
the prior address values had been displayed to others, but not doing so where
they had not been or had been displayed to a different set/group that current
-- some people may have been comfortable displaying an @facebook.com email
address once those became available but not their "real", personal email
address.

~~~
Ntrails
2 days ago I was asked to respond to a survey on facebook and my opinions on
the site. This ploy was one of my many gripes - I look forward to seeing the
rest of my complaints actioned...

------
enscr
That's a shame. There's plenty of potential in email that's yet to be
explored. Gmail was a great step ahead 10 years ago but it hasn't kept pace.
Deep integration of email with web has yet to happen.

~~~
Sharlin
I don't have data, but I'm pretty sure email is all but irrelevant as a social
tool from a today's teenager's perspective - something that "only old people
use". I'm 29 and it's been years since I've sent a casual email to a friend...

~~~
k-mcgrady
But teenagers are no longer Facebook's core market. Teenagers are using
Snapchat and other services like Instagram and WhatsApp more (that's why
Facebook is buying them). Email still matters to people who started using
Facebook as teenagers 10 years ago when email was still important.

~~~
bdcravens
Email is and continues to be important to many to receive a paycheck. I'm very
quick to scold clients and other professionals I interact with who send me
texts instead of email. I can see email being supplanted by tools like
Basecamp, however, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Facebook start to go in
that direction ("Facebook for the enterprise")

------
josefresco
Having not used this feature were messages sent to your @facebook.com address
delivered into your FB messages box? Or somewhere else? I would assume the
former, which actually sounds like a nice feature until.... you remember that
Facebook is a walled garden, which means that people who would see/have access
to your @facebook.com address could just ...message you on Facebook.

This almost seems like a feature for non-FB users to get in touch with you via
Facebook (while also obscuring your "real" address). I know the idea of
"following" is a new-ish FB feature, but I wonder the timing of that was too
late to give this feature any traction.

~~~
jackcarter
They went to your "Other" inbox, which nobody ever checks. It's the same place
messages from non-friends go.

Actually, now that I look at it, there's a message from somebody who found my
wallet once. Fortunately he also discovered me on LinkedIn, or I would never
have noticed.

~~~
bluepnume
Someone found my wallet too and located me on linkedin. Come to think of it,
it's the most useful linkedin has ever been for me.

------
lugg
I dont get it. I really liked the single inbox idea, what I didn't understand
is why they didn't just allow IMAP or oauth integration with gmail and tackle
it that way, they already have messenger on my phone, they already have all my
Facebook messages, the only thing left was email. Email addresses are ids.
They dont change. Period.

~~~
gaius
_Email addresses are ids. They dont change. Period_

I am guessing you are very young. I remember back in the 90s when your email
address was provided by your college or your workplace, and when you moved on,
you lost it, you didn't even get to set up a forwarding. If two people
happened to move in between updating their address books, then they simply
lost touch. Phone numbers where similarly ephemeral; landlines were only
portable within an area code, mobiles within a single network. And of course
postal addresses too, people were moving every year at college, then every few
years with work, including overseas. Keeping track of how to contact people
was a tedious and error prone process.

The radical thing about FB for now-30-somethings is that this problem simply
went away.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
> this problem simply went away

Yeah, cause everyone has Gmail.

~~~
vidarh
Not even remotely true. Gmail _may_ have become the largest webmail service,
depending on who you ask, but Outlook.com / Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail are still
huge too. In many markets Gmail comes well down the list.

"Everyone" in the _tech_ world has Gmail.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
Yeah, but webmail sort of fixed the disappearing email address problem. That's
what I meant.

------
skrebbel
I love the photo subtitle:

> _Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch of email in 2010._

~~~
lovamova
This guy invented email, right?

~~~
BlackDeath3
Yes, and when people say "my Internet", what they're really referring to is
not a home Internet connection but their _own personal Internet_.

------
matthewmayer
So, after the change, anyone who knows my public Facebook username can now
directly send me email? I wonder if we'll be able to turn that off...

~~~
theGimp
Facebook says that will be an option.

------
chinpokomon
I was just talking to someone about this service today. I don't think I ever
tried it.

When it launched I still actively used Facebook, but it was a slow rollout and
I didn't have access at that time. Since then, I've stopped using Facebook for
almost everything and after the initial launch, all but forgot about it.

The recent purchase of WhatsApp however, reminded me of their email service
and I remarked how reminiscent it was of the move in the late 90's from email
to IM.

I'm sort of surprised that they are retiring it entirely as I thought they'd
use the messaging app to drive higher adoption rates of their email service,
akin to Hangouts integrating with GMail. I thought it would actually be a good
strategy. I guess it's hard to convert the masses to another email system when
most users are probably happy with what they've already got.

------
DrewRWx
That actually came in handy the odd times when I had to input an email address
for someone that mainly used FB.

------
swang
Interesting that they didn't restore the old email addresses for people who
kept it or didn't know their email showed up as *@facebook.com. Or at least it
didn't seem like it from the profiles I viewed.

~~~
concerned_user
Because if they do that they will be unable to eavesdrop on your e-mail
anymore, technically to forward an e-mail they have to receive it and resend.
AFAIR SMTP protocol does not have redirects as HTTP does.

------
nicholassmith
Who would have thought customers would want yet another email service that had
no real benefits over their existing email service?

It always seemed like a baffling idea to try and run out in the world,
especially as to get a Facebook account you need an email address.

------
mathouc
Oh, just wrote an article about the lessons we learned from that:
[http://blog.frontapp.com/lessons-from-facebook-stopping-
its-...](http://blog.frontapp.com/lessons-from-facebook-stopping-its-e-mail-
service/)

------
EdwardDiego
Well, good. Being assigned an email address I didn't ask for by the "we need
to know all we can about you in order to optimise the pictures of baking your
Aunt keeps posting" website never really drew me in.

------
omh
That's a shame.

I use this to send emails to a couple of older family members who are happy
using Facebook but don't use any 'real' email address. Is there any chance
they'll keep some forwarding option around?

~~~
dasil003
As the article says, they will forward it the email the user signed up with,
which is of course required to use Facebook so your relatives must have one
(even if they don't check it).

~~~
concerned_user
And now ask yourself a question why would they want to do that? I mean why
keep unneeded load on their servers and support whole infrastructure just to
forward e-mail. Probably because they want to continue to reading your e-mails
but now they don't have to invest into storage. Just copy the interesting ones
for themselves.

------
finalight
i don't even know there's facebook email address given to us

~~~
yardie
It used to be prominently featured in your profile page. I've never used mine
since I have so many better, older options.

------
ulfw
Well that was one huge success again.

