Are you willing to trust Facebook with your email?
By Ben Patterson ben Patterson
Facebook has called another press event, slated for next week—and based on the oh-so-subtle decorations on the invites, many believe that Mark Zuckerberg & Co. are poised to unleash a so-called "Gmail killer." But are we truly ready to turn our inboxes over to Facebook?
The latest word on Monday morning's briefing is that we'll get our first look at Project Titan—the code name for what is reputedly a secret Facebook project aimed at creating a full-on Web-based email client to rival such competitors as Gmail, Hotmail and (of course) Yahoo! Mail. (You've noticed that Yahoo! News—which hosts this blog—and Yahoo! Mail are owned by the same company, right?)
Inside Facebook headquarters, Project Titan is being called a "Gmail killer," TechCrunch reports. Many believe that the rumored email project could help explain the recent flap between Facebook and Google over Facebook's unwillingness to allow its users to export their friends lists—and their contact info—into Gmail.
Assuming the rumors are true—and remember, there's no official word from Facebook yet—what might we be talking about here?
Facebook already has its own bare-bones client for exchanging private messages with your Facebook friends, but it's pretty basic. You can't import e-mail from other clients or POP accounts, organize your messages into folders, or archive them for safekeeping; your only options are to mark a message as unread, report spam or delete.
On the low end, Facebook could simply add some of that basic functionality: the ability to create folders, checkboxes for selecting which messages go where, POP support and so on. It's also a good bet that Facebook users would be issued an email address, and Inside Facebook has some theories (would you get an "@facebook.com" email domain, "@fb.com" or something else?) on that front.
The smart money, though, seems to be on the possibility of something far more ambitious: a "full-fledged" email client that would truly compete with Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and other advanced Web-based email services that give you desktop-style features in a browser.
There's even speculation that Facebook's Project Titan could integrate with Microsoft's just-launched Office Web Apps, which could mean you'd be able to edit online Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, all within your Facebook account.
In other words—and again, assuming all the Titan talk is for real—it would appear that Facebook is pursuing nothing more ambitious than to become your online nerve center, your home base, your first stop when it comes to scanning the news, checking in with your friends, corresponding with ... well, the world, and even doing something productive, at least when you're not whiling away the hours on FarmVille.
Are there risks to letting Facebook take over as your email client? Well, sure. Anyone who's already nervous about Facebook invading their privacy will find reason to fret about Facebook handling their email accounts. Will messages be scanned for keywords that would result in targeted advertisements? (Oh, wait—Gmail already does that.) What about Facebook developers—would they get access to your messages? (You never know, although Facebook's been much better lately about letting you slam the door shut on Platform app access to your info.)
But there are plenty of possible advantages, too. As TechCrunch points out, Facebook's engineers have made a science out of mapping your various circles of friends, and the site could use that expertise to create a "smart" inbox that organizes your messages according to who's most important to you—and who isn't. (I'd imagine users would be able to turn off their "smart" inboxes if they wanted to.)
Using Facebook for email could also mean the end of having to remember the current (or proper, depending on the occasion) e-mail address for your various confidants. For better or worse, it's increasingly feeling like the whole world's on Facebook, and while email addresses change all the time (because someone has changed jobs, moved to a new ISP or merely grown tired of their old email client), Facebook accounts tend to stay the same—making emailing someone a simple (and reliable) matter of just typing in their name.
Keep in mind, however, that Mark Zuckerberg isn't shy about touting his ultimate goal of "making everything social"—a quest that seems to translate, sooner or later, into making everything Facebook. Adding a full-on email client to Facebook represents yet another step in that direction, for good or ill.
In any case, this is all just conjecture. For all we know, Zuckerberg could have little more to announce on Monday (at 10 a.m. PT, by the way) than the ability to choose pretty background templates for your Facebook messages.
Something tells me we'll be getting a lot more than that come Monday, however—and given that, I'd like to hear from you.
If Facebook does unveil a new, Gmail-caliber email client, would you make the switch? Would you trust Facebook with your inbox, or are you wary of the privacy implications—or leery of Facebook in general? (Personally, I'm all over the map on this one.)
Let me know.
(Yahoo!)
