

Facebook announces new Messaging Feature - spaetzel
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=452288242130

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flipbrad
So according to their blog:

“All of your messages with someone will be together in one place, whether they
are sent over chat, email or SMS. You can see everything you’ve discussed with
each friend as a single conversation.

I’m intensely jealous of the next generation who will have something like
Facebook for their whole lives. They will have the conversational history with
the people in their lives all the way back to the beginning: From “hey nice to
meet you” to “do you want to get coffee sometime” to “our kids have soccer
practice at 6 pm tonight.” That’s a really cool idea.”

I bet advertisers (Facebook's true customers, let's not forget), overzealous
law enforcement officials, not-so-honest-or-nice politicians, and identity
thieves, are also intensely jealous of future generations with access to
entire records of conversations.

~~~
orblivion
Well, possibly easier access anyway, since Facebook owns Facebook
conversations. But if you've never changed your email address, it's not much
different right?

~~~
barber
The analogy of "Grandma's letters" really breaks down when you consider that
Facebook owns the conversation.

------
iantimothy
I think the issue with a unified inbox and the ability to push messages to
different channels based on the recipient's choice is that a lot of time, the
context of the message depends on the channel i choose to send it with.

The world of asynchronous and synchronous communication is going to clash in a
very messy, destructive, apocalyptic Neo-versus-Agent Smith way.

For example:

1\. SMS

When I send a message via SMS, it could be either to pass on information or
initiate (continue) a conversation. Sometimes the content of the message isn't
clear enough to highlight the context and when this happens between a
boyfriend and girlfriend, the gates of hell can be opened, and the fury of a
thousand suns going supernova is unleashed, usually on the hapless boyfriend
(not a true story, I swear).

Or whether you should end the thread with 'ttys' or 'ttyl' or 'brb' as with IM
protocol, and trust me, sometimes not continuing a SMS thread or not ending it
nicely can lead to you having to spend money to say sorry.

Although I think SMS usage has been happening long enough that people
generally tend to interpret context relatively well NOW, SMS communication
sometimes do suffer from the problem of parties not knowing whether a
conversation is supposed to be happening asynchronously or (relatively)
synchronously.

If you have ever sent an SMS (usually to an attractive member of the opposite
sex after a first meeting, or maybe a very prospective business contact) and
waited for a few hours for a reply, frantically wondering if you had said
something wrong, or that person wasn't interested in maintaining what looked
like a blossoming relationship, then you understand how different perceptions
of what mode a conversation is supposed to be in can sunder the social fabric.

2\. Email

We tend to allow the intervals between subsequent emails in a conversation to
be longer than SMS. After all, there is the general understanding that
accessing and replying to one's email is harder than receiving and sending
messages via SMS because of the ubiquity of the mobile phone versus Internet
access on the move and the ease of entering a long form email versus sending a
SMS. Also, it is easier for most to type long message when emailing than when
sending a SMS due to the nature of the clients and where we actually do it
(i.e. on the desktop). I usually switch to a more focused mode when reading
emails because they generally are about work and are usually longer.

Subject headers in email are a great way to delineate threads. An email with a
new subject is the start of a new thread.

3\. Instant messaging

Instant messaging is clearly generally expected to be synchronous. When
instant messaging, there are socially acceptable standards to start and end a
conversation. The signaling has been learned.

Is it going to be impossible to learn the new social rules of engagement? I
don't believe it will be so. However, I do believe that the lack of clear
signaling of the context of a conversation (i.e. synchronous versus
asynchronous, start of a new topic ...) could be disastrous.

Note: Maybe only some of us have to relearn. It could very well be the younger
generation already know how to contextualize the messages without use of the
various channels, subject headers ... If so, I'm curious how they do it.

------
mithaler
They're not offering email; they're trying to replace email with their own
platform.

~~~
jhrobert
Please define "email" :)

To me, an email is basically an email address.

~~~
davidw
<http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt>

~~~
mike-cardwell
I'm going to be totally anal now. RFC 5321 obsoleted 2821 in 2008. Also, SMTP
isn't the same as e-mail. Just like IMAP isn't the same as e-mail.

~~~
ciupicri
IMAP are POP3 optional. /var/spool/mail/$USER or ~/mobx were enough some time
ago, although right now not everyone is running their own mail (smtp) server.

~~~
mike-cardwell
So is SMTP... How about LMTP?

IMO "email" is a combination of the various transport technologies and the
message format.

------
spaetzel
Also, you can now request an invite here
<http://www.facebook.com/about/messages/>

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tealtan
Why this won't have the same problems that Google Wave faced:

\+ It incorporates existing modes of communication. You HAD to have a Wave
account to talk to someone else on Wave, and the biggest issue for me when I
got my account was that I didn't have anyone to use Wave with. Facebook
doesn't particularly care in this case, it wants to aggregate ALL your
communication. You'll stay in touch with your less techy friends who still
email you or text you.

\+ Large user base with existing friends list. Google Wave started you out
from scratch.

\+ Really smart product video. Most people didn't want to watch the Google
Wave video or got confused by it, whereas Facebook's video is super clear
about what it is. It focuses less on the cool tech (unlike Google Wave) and
focuses completely on why you will want to use it.

~~~
ciupicri
If someone texts me will the message be available under my Facebook account?
From what I see, no, so it's still not enough.

~~~
tealtan
I think it will be.

"Today I'm excited to announce the next evolution of Messages. You decide how
you want to talk to your friends: via SMS, chat, email or Messages. They will
receive your message through whatever medium or device is convenient for them,
and you can both have a conversation in real time. You shouldn't have to
remember who prefers IM over email or worry about which technology to use.
Simply choose their name and type a message."

------
jewbacca
The only feature I care about and what I've been hurting for for years is some
means of segregating the Groups bacn. Some of most personally significant
correspondences I've ever had are in my Messages Inbox. In the early days, it
had a sentiment-noise ratio second only to a shoebox I keep in the back of my
closet. Now it's 95% garbage from Groups/Events I value just barely enough to
not unsubscribe from. I recognize the value of those messages given their own
context, and I also recognize that the signal's dropped off since I'm no
longer a 19-year-old drama whore.

But the simple ability to sort personal messages from mass bacn is still the
#1 feature I've wanted from Facebook, through all these years of feed
redesigns and app platforms.

------
ibgeek
Am I the only one who sees this as Google Wave Redux? I mean, they even hired
the guy who created Google Wave.

~~~
levesque
Yeah, but they had also hired the guy who created gmail ;)

~~~
ovi256
Yeah, but Paul Buchheit did not work on this. He confirmed it somewhere on HN
IIRC.

------
iuguy
Did anyone else notice the Chuckle Brothers in the photo?
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuckle_Brothers>)

They're down as the picture for Chris Piro.

Apologies for those uninterested in 80s and 90s UK kids entertainment, but it
just seems so random.

~~~
JonnieCache
That is absolutely superb. And probably grounds for a lawsuit. Wouldn't think
paul and barry would be too litigious. That bloke who always hired them every
week is probably well up for it though.

------
zugumzug
Whether or not it works, this seems like the right approach for FB. I
definitely have had the experience of not knowing how to contact people
(friends, parents, younger siblings.) People often talk about building
something that solves a common problem and this does that. I think it will
catch on.

------
chrisgoodrich
The problem with this? (and all other attempts to change "messaging")

Is that it requires users to do something different than they expect or do
currently. The goal of having a "unified inbox" won't work unless you natively
integrate with all the places where somebody currently sends messages. This
requires the user to change their behavior for what? To have a "unified
inbox?" I don't think that's compelling enough for user to change their
messaging behavior.

Google has the same issue with Google Voice.

~~~
Tomek_
For many people that won't be a problem - I think of those who already use
Facebook inbox regulary, many of them already more often than e-mail. I've
found out myself doing it more often recently. Why? It's easier and more
convenient - when I write a message to John Doe I know exactly to who I am
writing, with e-mail you have to remember which e-mail was whose, or which of
the e-mails of Joe Doe that you have is that correct, latest one; and the same
with phone numbers and SMSes. Yes, in a big scale of things, moving your
communication with others to Facebook isn't the best idea ever, but in a day
to day hurry you often forget about the great, big things and just stick to
what's seems easier and faster _now_. That's why I think this has all the
chances to actually be successful, for better or worse.

~~~
chrisgoodrich
Agreed. And I see the larger vision.

Yes, it'll be easier. But I, for one, won't use Facebook Messages for SMS. Why
would I text Facebook to text my buddy for me? When I can just select him from
my address book?

All of a sudden the idea of unified communications and messaging is out the
window.

~~~
ma2rten
What if you could use a facebook app on your mobile phone to text your buddy
for free ?

------
ciupicri
As jwz would say:

 _Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs
which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can._

------
hartror
" _this product isn't email, but it lets people who do use email to connect
with the rest of us_ "

Even Facebook seem to have caught the email is dead meme.

" _keep this lookup table in my head_ "

Is this a pain point for anyone? Our contacts are stored in such a way that
this is obvious, I can't send a SMS to grandma as she doesn't have a mobile.

~~~
jessriedel
> Is this a pain point for anyone?

Yes, I have several friends whose SMS, Facebook, and email contacts I have but
who each prefer a different service.

------
Kilimanjaro
The only flaw of all this is that vanity ids won't automagically become email
addresses for everybody.

If I tell my friends to find me at facebook/kilimanjaro I want them to message
me at kilimanjaro@facebook.com too.

They should associate and create 500M email accounts right away and become the
greatest email provider on earth.

------
Tomek_
Does anyone here have already used it? I wonder about two things: file
attachments, are they there? and 2nd thing: multi-persons conversation: can
you add a new person to an already existing conversation? how does it work
with chat or phone-messaging?

~~~
ahalam
File attachments are present. They have updated Haystack, the photos
infrastructure, to handle general file attachments.

I don't remember hearing if you can add some one to an existing conversation.
But I clearly remember that they said that it was possible to remove some one
from a conversation. Therefore, I assume, that they would have also thought of
adding a person.

------
robryan
Didn't seem to state whether the email will have POP3/IMAP access, if not this
just seems to be an attempt to push more of our lives onto Facebook without a
great amount of gain.

------
retube
I just sent to my gmail a test email from facebook. 5 minutes on it hasn't
arrived.

