Facebook Email, which may or may not be unleashed later today, already has a raft of ‘experts’ blathering on about why it’ll be a failure, how Facebook privacy issues will make it a lame duck, and that it’ll never be a competitor to Gmail. It’s a burbling cloud of utter idiocy, and they’re all missing the point.
Should it emerge from Zuckerberg’s FaceFortress tonight, Facebook Email will be an instant win. Not because geeks and tech-heads will use it, but because Facebook has 500m registered users. That outguns any other web service going and easily dwarves every existing web mail outfit.
As much as geeks love Gmail, it is not as big as many of its competitors (Hotmail is still far larger). Where bells and whistles, plug-ins and Beta add-ons make nerds swoon, it’s simplicity and marketing which grab the mainstream. And it’s also a way for Facebook to extend its tentacles into another corner of the web.
Think of it like this: If Zuckerberg’s coding wizards can make Facebook Email a way of sending messages to people outside the walls of the social network, you’ve got an instant hit.
Adding Facebook Email will help draw in lots of people who’ve yet to be bitten by the bug. Facebook Email will also offer far better authentication that the person using it is, well, an actual person. Sure spammers can build Facebook profiles but it’s a hell of a lot more time consuming to do that simply registering a vast zombie army of Hotmail accounts now, isn’t it?
It’s more personal too. Want to advertise for a new recruit? Facebook Mail will instantly let you see what they’re like, not to mention their working history, tagged to a company’s page in many cases, so it can’t easily be faked.
And Facebook Email will also bake in push by default. Facebook apps already fire push messages to hundreds of millions of phones worldwide and email can also be pushed to the Facebook homepage. Finally, Facebook Mail kills off the need for attachments – Facebook can host your videos and photos simply, keeping messages light and quick to download whatever your device.
Think Facebook Email will fail? No chance. You and I might not jump to put our Inbox in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg but there are legions of web users to whom the ongoing Facebook privacy debates are just so much distant chatter. They’ll be on Facebook Email quicker than a W.I member on a Victoria Sponge.
If Facebook Email drops this afternoon, the competition will turn puce. And with good reason.
