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New Delhi: Facebook has unleashed a new email-based messaging based service to its 500 million users, titled Project Titan, it will put Facebook in more direct competition with established giants such as Yahoo! and Google.
In a press conference, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, said We don't think that a modern messaging system is going to be email, we want people to be able to communicate in whatever way they choose: email, text or Facebook message,Facebook's new email system is modelled on instant messaging and online chat and will allow people to simplify their communications regardless of how they choose to do it. Texts, email or instant messages will all come into one 'feed' and users can respond in any way they want.
Zuckerberg said that he was changing Facebook because young people found email was too much of a 'cognitive load'.The new messaging system isn't exactly an "email killer," but will be able to handle email and host of other communicative systems including instant messaging and SMS text messages. Facebook Messages will also eventually allow users to get a Facebook email address (@Facebook.com)."There was a lot of press leading up to this saying this is an e-mail killer," Zuckerberg however stated, "This is not an e-mail killer.
It's a messaging system that has e-mail as one part of it. I don't expect people to wake up tomorrow and say, 'I'm going to shut down my Yahoo account or my Gmail account.' We expect that more people will IM and more people will message just because it's simpler and easier and it's more fun and valuable to use.""It's not e-mail. It handles e-mail in addition to Facebook messages, and Facebook IM, and other IM and SMS and all the other different ways that you want to communicate. It's true, people are going to be able to have Facebook.com e-mail addresses, but it's not e-mail," Zuckerberg said.
The messaging system essentially would take emails, IMs and SMS and put them into one blended interface. Users will be able to communicate with each other using whatever medium they prefer, even in real time. It will track every single message two people send each other and be able to prioritize the people that are more important in a user's life.Unlike traditional email, there will be no subject lines, or CC'ing. Messages will be sent when a user simply hits the enter key to send one. Zuckerberg said it's an evolution of traditional email, which he said has become too slow and too formal. He was inspired, he said, by a group of high schoolers who said they do not even use traditional email for that very reason."E-mail is too formal," Zuckerberg said. "Think of the friction of trying to think of the e-mail address and think of a subject line, write 'Hey Mom,' at the top and 'Love, Mark' at the bottom."Zuckerberg said Facebook has been developing the new service for 15 months. Entire conversation histories going back years will also be saved into users' accounts and Spam will be completely filtered out, he claimed.
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