Facebook Mail may kill Gmail and Hotmail?

This may no longer be big news to Internet active individuals but I am still compelled somehow to share this information to my readers. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently launched a Facebook email service – already being dubbed the ‘Gmail or email Killer’.

With such tight competition between the two online powerhouses it makes sense for Facebook to leverage its huge user base to branch out into other services other than social networking. Email seems like a natural progression, especially as 9.78% of all visitors to Facebook in October visited an email service immediately before going to Facebook.

The following was mentioned in the launching event of sorts:

• The need for immediacy in messaging.
• Simplicity of messaging.
• Overly formal process in emails today.
• Seamless messaging.
• Lack of “threads” in real-life conversations.
• Problem of spam in email.

The new Facebook product is “not email”, says Zuckerberg. He proposes that there should be integration across multiple platforms, a conversation history with a person, rather than a subject. He proposes a “Social Inbox”.

Here are some of the changes which are the goals:

• Everyone will have an @facebook.com email address.
• The new messaging platform is modeled like a chat system.
• Conversations will be organized by the people you care about the most.
• Messages will be organized by “People”, “Other”, and “Junk”.
• “Other” refers to messages that users want to receive, but don’t want cluttering their inbox, which holds messages from people they care about.
• Integrates with other email platforms and SMS.

It may not be surprising if facebook does get pass google, unless google has something up their sleeves :P. Though it will be interesting to have an yournamehere@facebook.com; What do you think?