Facebook Unveils Email Addresses, New Messaging Features

Facebook Unveils Email Addresses, New Messaging Features

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social network will be launching a revamped messaging product, 'Messages,' that will give users an "@facebook.com" email address.

Zuckerberg outlined three features that will define Facebook's new offering, which Zuckerberg described as "the way the future should work": Seamless messaging (users can chat with people through whatever medium they choose, be it SMS, email, or IM), conversation history ("see everything you've discussed with each friend as a single conversation"), and a social inbox for "filtering exactly the messages you want to see."

"This is not an email killer," Zuckerberg said. "This is a messaging system that includes email as one part of it."

Facebook's latest evolution of Messages ties in multiple forms of communication--SMS, IMs, email--from Facebook and other platforms to allow users to communicate in real-time, on-the-go through whichever messaging tool they prefer. "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," Facebook wrote in a blog post

Facebook will be rolling the product out over the coming months, initially via invite-only. All Facebook users will eventually be offered "@facebook.com" email addresses that match their public usernames, although they will have the option not to have an "@facebook.com" email account.

Facebook's Andrew Bosworth noted, "The system is definitely not email," adding, "We've it modeled more after chat."

Zuckerberg called email "slow" and also emphasized that the new product is "not email." "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.

See what Messages will look like below.

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