Looks like facebook is finally getting into free email services, on Monday they announced their new Messages service, which includes an @facebook.com email address. This is going to blur the email / social networking line even further, by providing a multi-faceted way of communicating with friends using whatever medium or device is convenient for them, including email for those not on facebook.
From the official blog:
"We are also providing an @facebook.com email address to every person on Facebook who wants one. Now people can share with friends over email, whether they're on Facebook or not. To be clear, Messages is not email. There are no subject lines, no cc, no bcc, and you can send a message by hitting the Enter key. We modeled it more closely to chat and reduced the number of things you need to do to send a message. We wanted to make this more like a conversation."
This is an interesting change for facebook as it puts it into direct competition with gmail, which is arguably the "hub" of all google's social activity. Why bother having a gmail account when you can get a facebook account instead? Google has already canned its Google Wave, I wonder what this will mean for its email service now!
Facebook Messages is live now, at http://www.facebook.com/about/messages/
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