Facebook’s Gmail Killer, Project Titan, Is Coming On Monday | Hacker News Reader

Facebook’s Gmail Killer, Project Titan, Is Coming On Monday

techcrunch.com

231 pointsobilgic207 comments

If facebook can really deliver a rock solid web mail client, I think they will really be a company to watch in the rest of 1996 and 1997. If they play their cards right they may get snapped up by an industry powerhouse like yahoo or excite@home for eight figures.

You have lots of upvotes, so what you are saying must be interesting. But I can't seem to get it! Can anyone explain what's this about?

back in that era all of the successful players - you know, the REALLY successful players like Yahoo, Microsoft and Excite (!) had web-mail clients that were basically startups they acquired.

It was only Google that really built a killer web-mail client from scratch in-house.

and the Google client was made mostly by @paul Buchheit, who just left Facebook for YC.

Business 2.0 speak, perhaps with a hint that web email at this point is OLD NEWS?

Trotsky has lots of upvotes because he or she managed rev the Hacker News Facebook Hate Machine with a bit of humor.

Can we get a trademark on the HNFHM?

We would need to establish a bona fide intent to use it for commerce, although it does seem like there's a strong market for facebook hating...

On a semi-related note, the reasoning for that is actually quite interesting - the justification stems from the congressional power to regulate commerce between states.

I will be really interested to see this, because as it stands Facebook's messaging interface is barely any better than 2001's Hotmail (you do get a pretty picture with address autocomplete though).

Going from where they are now to anywhere close to being a 'Gmail killer' is a humongous step.

A humongous step that Techcrunch is more than happy to make.

Techcrunch? What are you talking about?

The title of their article.

"killer" is journalistic shorthand for "rival", they just want the conflict and the attendant pageviews, they don't care who wins or who is likely to win.

Or if there is even a winner. Sometimes people forget that companies compete with each other and we don't all use the same products from the same companies.

TC cited that as the phrase being used inside Facebook. Did you RTFA?

Ok so what step did Techcrunch make and what does it have to do with the either Facebook or the title of the article? It just makes little sense.

I heard that Zuckerberg locked Paul Buchheit in a closet and told him he couldn't come out until he cloned Gmail.

It's being put into 'The Social Network 2: Return of the Lawsuits' as I write.

I hear their legal strategy is: "If you invented facemail you would have invented facemail." followed by writing a cheque for a tenth of what they just raised.

"In the scheme of things, it is a parking ticket" ;)

Sorkin, is that you?

"Hey man, want any emails from people at harvard? I have them all. They trust me. Fucking idiots."

Can we stop with the movie references please?

I'd believe it

maybe they'll let him out on Nov15th then: http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/facebook-gmail-titan/

Is that why Paul ran off to YC, as soon as it's done?

Actually, I think the starkness of Facebook's messaging UI is its greatest strength. If they can somehow make real email as simple as that, abstracting away all the decades-old cruft of email that Gmail only partially abstracts away, it will be quite a formidable entry.

Add a script that allows non-technical users to log into their Gmail account and set up a redirect... and things could get very interesting.

I've always thought that Facebook could make a real difference by becoming a central hub to control your "persona" or identity so to speak. Facebook could integrate with every other service and app under the sun, and users would not require to input information (any more then their Facebook uri) to register for anything.

Instead they're trying to undercut Google by keeping them out of the 'shared data' agreement and now they're going into... e-mail and messaging? I'd rather they work on improving Facebook Connect and give me a way to control my data (and usable privacy controls while we're at it). I sure as hell don't want my personal email (and even less any business or corporate email) going through Facebook. Hell I have a hard time accepting Gmail, though it's so convenient I compromise.

Lots of people say that Facebook won't go the way of MySpace. But you know what? Lots of people said the same thing about MySpace too. Everyday I see or hear more and more about people I know just not using their accounts anymore and in some cases actually deleting them; even I don't get much value from it either this days.

I think Facebook is losing direction and just trying to wow users with amazing features that no one really needs. They need to focusing on making what they have better, not adding features and avoiding integration with other services.

> Facebook could integrate with every other service and app under the sun, and users would not require to input information (any more then their Facebook uri) to register for anything.

Facebook has done exactly this, and there's been quite a bit of backlash, with some discussion on this site itself.

Facebook Connect has a long way from being the "identity manager" I speak of, and it's integration with applications as it is now leaves a lot to be desired. There has been backslash because 1) it's a mediocre implementation and 2) the lack of openness on behalf of Facebook and their methods are not in the best interest of either the users or the applications that could use this system.

Facebook could have become the central hub in which you can manage your identity (in an open way of course). Facebook could allow you to easily do anything on the web with fewer clicks by means of integration with other sevices. Instead they rather have you locked in to using their services and implementations and that is what I don't agree on. I wished it followed what I want, but whatever they do I wish it was adding value to the experience instead of just creating a more locked in ecosystem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigy_%28online_service%29

Is MySpace dead? Prodigy is, so is kozmo.com, and broadcast.com.

My money is on Amazon. No other network has as many users associated with credit cards as Amazon, as well as written reviews by 'authorized' users.

I've long wondered why Amazon doesn't have a authentication service, like Facebook and Twitter. Seems like it would be really useful for startups based on EC2.

>Lots of people say that Facebook won't go the way of MySpace. But you know what? Lots of people said the same thing about MySpace too.

The difference is that, when people gave up on MySpace, Facebook was there to move to. Not sure there's anything comparable now.

I think Facebook has much much bigger goals than silly gmail killing. It's trying to become the internet for all those who don't know the difference between a browser, web site and the internet. Offering email services is just a small step in that direction.

I agree. One market I'd like to see them enter is online payments and micropayments, they have enough reach that they could probably pull it off.

Facebook Credits don't count?

Not familiar with those....are they interchangeable for money?

I'd like to be able to easily send $5 to a friend via facebook, or 25 cents to the author of a blog post I enjoyed. Others have tried the micropayments, but it needs a heavyweight to really pull it off. Maybe facebook can buy a startup that has it nicely figured out technically, but can't get traction.

You buy them with real money, and can spend them within applications on Facebook. It's not usable for anything outside of Facebook, or directly sending stuff to your friends.

But it's still the beginnings of an entry into the market.

You can already purchase Facebook credits for games and the like. It's just a matter of time before they transition that into something with a wider reach.

So it's more like a hotmail killer. Gmail users tend to be "power" ones.

Hotmail and Yahoo Mail are also more than twice as big as Gmail.

A lot of people compare Facebook to MySpace, but isn't AOL also a good comparison?

Remember all the companies that were AOL keywords. Now they have Facebook pages. AOL has a messenger, now Facebook does. It just strikes me as AOL for the 21st century.

I actually got to pose the question (live and in-person), "Isn't Facebook the new AOL?" to Steve Case last week.

What was his reply?

"Actually, it reminds me of Prodigy." - Steve Case

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigy_%28online_service%29

And...? Don't leave us hanging!

How did he answer?

> A lot of people compare Facebook to MySpace, but isn't AOL also a good comparison?

"Facebook is the new AOL" is about as close as Hacker News gets to a meme.

I wonder, then, if they'll ever enter into web search. It would make sense, given the seeming herd migration of engineers from Google (though I don't know how many were from Search).

So the interesting question to me is, after learning about the history of AOL, why would Facebook want to pursue what on surface seems like a similar strategy.

What's different this time with Facebook? And are the threats to its growth, success and longevity in principle the same as AOL's.

Zuckerberg is absolutely the man I want to trust with my e-mail.

Dare this not be sarcasm?

Sarcasm? The word isn't even in my dictionary.

Actually looking at it the whole section from marmalade to turbot appears to be missing.

(With thanks to Douglas Adams for the joke).

Obvious sarcasm, and I agree. Facebook has become synonymous with insecurity, poor privacy, and scams. Why anyone would trust them with personal info is beyond me.

It's not that I completely trust google either, but they do seem to have a better track record of having their users interests in mind.

If you already trust Google with your email, then it cant be that bad.

Google doesn't have a tendency to change their privacy policy and intentionally release private information, while Facebook does.

[EDIT: Changed "the" to "their," and "rules" to "policy," as this makes my sentence both look better and more accurate.]

What about Buzz?

My understanding of that was that the individual in question (was there more than one person?) clicked through confirmation screens without looking at them, assuming that everything would be okay. It is not Google's fault when users are idiots.

However, I may be wrong; I only recall one instance of this happening with Buzz, and may simply have missed other ones.

Other times when google violated privacy which I remember: 1) Accidentally logging packets, which they then told people about and found a good way to delete, instead of just pretending it didn't happen. 2) Releasing emails (and other information?) to governments when required to do so by law, which I consider a valid excuse.

The problem, at least right at launch, was not that users were idiots, it was that the confirmation screens that they did read were misleading. The confirmation screen said words whose obvious interpretation was "click here not to use Buzz," but the real meaning was "click here not to further configure Buzz." Users, even non-idiot ones, would be quite reasonable to assume that clicking that button would either deactivate Buzz or never have it become active in the first place, when in fact that button left Buzz running in its default state of sharing personal information with a bunch of people. Actual deactivation was hidden behind a bunch of config menus.

Google is not evil by nature (though i have my own doubts) and Facebook is also not evil by nature. Facebook simply has a different philosophy on _sharing_. They believe that people should share everything and be more social. If this is not something people are not comfortable with, then those people have no business in signing up for facebook and complaining that everything is shared by default. As far as Google's privacy 'glitches' are concerned, in my experience bugs make it into production accidentally. But pieces of code that are developed specifically to sample wifi packets that might contain sensitive data or code that exposes all my email contacts to the entire world do not make into production accidentally.

Both are semi-evil towards end-users by virtue of these end-users being the product, rather than the customers they imagine themselves to be.

Google tries to reach the unevil side, by giving you as full control of your data as they can, and not cross over the creepy line (although they are always near it).

Facebook doesn't, and therefore finds itself on the evil side almost all the time. It's not that they want to be evil that makes them evil; It's just that not avoiding becoming evil makes them that way, and they do not try to avoid it in any way. (Plus, evil is more lucrative).

When you say "intentionally" are you referring to the recent UID leaks? If anything Facebook is doing more to protect user privacy now with their "no exporting your friends email" policies.

I feel increasingly uncomfortable using GMail but I still think Google is a step up from Facebook.

Yea. It's too bad that Amazon's cloud is black-listed from most major email providers.

I trust I can read my gMail over SSL without someone firesheeping me. Can I do that with Facebook right now?

Incidentally, facebook has SSL as well: https://facebook.com. Unfortunately, it's not the default and there doesn't appear to be any way to force it.

Ding.

I use HTTPS everywhere and it seems to work. Facebook chat doesn't, though.

I don't like using GMail too much, but I'll be damned if I let Facebook see anymore of what I communicate than what it does now.

You can force it through a few extensions. I'm on chrome, and I've been using https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/obfehkohhfbooodo...

Works fairly well, but it loads the main page and then refreshes into SSL. I'm sure there are similar extensions for firefox, etc.

If @facebook.com email addresses have a stronger link to real, non-spammy, non-mass-produced identities than other domains, they could become preferred at many other sites -- a broader version of Facebook Connect.

Wrong -- your FB email address will likely have the same prefix as your vanity URL. Guess that that means? Spam bots know your email address already.

I think he means it the other way: e-mail addresses ending with facebook.com could signal "this is a genuine person, not a spammer".

Yet you're getting bombarded with spam. Not to mention, Facebook accounts are very easy to create. So I don't see that either.

Email addresses can be spoofed.

Not when you get it through Facebook Connect authorization.

Have you encountered many spammers with @gmail.com addresses?

Yes

quick google search...

http://www.addiff.com/Pub/gyc.aspx

What is the basis of this assertion? If a spammer can create an email address, he can create a fb profile too (anyways, email headers can be spoofed)

Yes! It may be easy to spoof outside of Facebook, but internally FB routes it's own emails, so when you use Titan to read a message from another Titan email address, Facebook can show you thatbit's genuine,

Spammers can create shell accounts, but they can't friend you, so when you receive email from someone you don't know, Facebook can shown you their friends list and public profile, or use that to prioritize your inbox.

Soo... basically whitelisting functionality. Something that we've had for a long time. Only this is automatic since people are (hopefully) more diligent about their Facebook friends list than their Gmail/Hotmail/Outlook address book.

That's my SWAG, although you can go a little further than your friends list given a social graph. You can score an email based on all sorts of social data. Are you friends? Friends of a common friend? Do you have "likes" in common? Do you belong to common groups? Have you commented on the same thing? And so on.

Any large email player can do some of the same things with a history of emails, but FB could (I am only guessing) do interesting things.

Whitelisting is one approach to the spam problem. Inbox prioritization is an interesting problem as well. Once we have emails in your message box, you could log into FB and find 100 or more emails even after filtering for spam. So... Which emails should appear on your home page and which should wait quietly in your inbox for you to take action?

And so Facebook offers a switch: "only accept mail from friends and sites I've liked".

If you've got a popular walled garden, making the jungle outside even scarier, and thus forcing a stronger commitment to the tended 'inside', can be good business.

But Gmail has a good spam filter. So, you could use Gmail's POP features to connect to and download your Facebook emails.

Although this is already the case with Google Profiles - the url is the same as your gmail account name unless you opt out/change it (most people don't)... yet google handles the spam well.

Tangent to your point: I suppose @facebook.com will be reserved for employees/contractors only. The Facebook users will probably get either @fbmail.com or @fmail.com.

If I were FB, I'd go with the latter, just so that I can say, "Fmail - it's one better than Gmail!"

Of course, that opens up a whole raft of other issues, not the least of which is F being right next to G (on my US QWERTY keyboard), so folks keying in an address might typo and send emails to the wrong service and/or person.

Not sure why you think that, Facebook has always stressed one, real identity. If your facebook URL is facebook.com/john.smith, why should your email not be john.smith@facebook.com? Is there a compelling reason? What would be the difference if john.smith became an employee of facebook?

My biggest data point is Google.

I'm google.com/profiles/<whatever>, but reached at <whatever>@gmail.com. I suppose Googlers get a <whatever>@google.com email ID.

Similarly for Microsoft.

I suppose AOL and Yahoo! could be counter-points, though...

Public profiles are indexed. Knowing the URL would then give you their fb email if it was also based on the same handle (which is certainly the most user friendly). Meaning facebook email will be hammered with spam. It'll be interesting to see what they go with.

Interesting... Not just that, it will be trivial to target spam directly at people and depending on the visibility of their profile, target it based on their public data.

If I were FB, I'd go with the latter, just so that I can say, "Fmail - it's one better than Gmail!"

Your view is exactly opposite from mine. I viewed it as higher is better (where A is 1 - or 0 if you're binarily inclined). You have regular email, and Google's GMail is two higher.

Facebook using FMail, to me, feels a bit like saying "it's better than plain Jane email, but still not quite as good as GMail."

Setting up fake Facebook accounts is trivial.

Sure, not as easy, perhaps, as some of the spammier email providers. But if the domain gets that much good karma it would be worth the effort...

1) Facebook can build a simple API which, given an email, tells you the trust rating of that person. "To sign up to this service you need a Facebook trust rating of 10 or more" <- no spammers on the service.

2) Emails from facebook can include the trust rating too.

How to get the trust rating? That's exactly what social networks are: networks of trust. Pick some obvious trustworthy nodes to start, expand from there with diminishing trust as you get further away, increasing trust the more connections there are to someone who's trustworthy, and so on... there's probably a zillion great algorithms to calculate this.

Solving the problem of trust would basically solve the problem of identity, since identity (in real life as well as online) is a product of a trust network.

> Facebook can build a simple API which, given an email, tells you the trust rating of that person.

That's, in general, a really good idea. Trouble is; it is something that Google could trivially offer as well (in fact, they have even more metric data to work with).

And the bigger problem is that you'd need to introduce it as a global standard so that email servers and clients would recognize it.

> Emails from facebook can include the trust rating too.

Sadly, that's easily spoofed :)

The problem of trust online is the fundamental "flaw" in the internet (and the reason spam can exist in such a massive form). The person that solves this in a manageable and global way will be printing money.

Make it one step better. Noboy can email an @facebook address without paying a registration fee. Same for receiving...

Make a fake profile with an image of a hot girl. Send out friend requests to random men. Done. This is not hard to automate.

Actually - it's not. To interact with other users in a significant way they have CAPTCHAS to fill out - unless you confirm your account via a mobile phone SMS (which can only be used 1-to-1).

The interface'll have the be unbelievably amazing and innovative for this to even make a dent in people's minds. And as others have pointed out, Facebook.com is not associated with professionalism (unless you're a recruiter or tech blogger or something).

All in all, I think nobody will care at the end of the day.

> The interface'll have the be unbelievably amazing and innovative for this to even make a dent in people's minds

I guarantee you that they are going to become the default address between people 16 and under. My brother is 16 and doesn't have an email address, but he does have a facebook account.

That's the scariest thing I've read so far today.

1: My daughter just moved into her own house today. 2: Wow, awesome! I should call them to congratulate her! Whats the new house number? 1: Oh, she doesn't have a landline, she just uses her cell phone. 2: That's the scariest thing I've heard so far today. 1: ???...

To the newest generations email is an antiquated technology that has no real use among their peers. Eventually they might get some email address for college/professional use, but that's practically akin to a fresh college grad now getting a fax machine because "its what we use at the office".

Not shocking.

Edit: Unless by "the scariest thing" you mean the idea of xyz@facebook.com becoming the default for the >17 crowd, in which case, disregard my nonsense.

This is very true. I'm 20 and I've never used my personal email regularly and I'm sure most of my friends haven't either. We've always used MSN or AIM and more recently Facebook to keep in touch.

I'm in my 40s and get more Facebook messages from my friends than I do emails. Many more.

I hadn't thought about it before, but same for me. The only friends who contact me through email are other programmers.

how do you send attachments?

I don't need to send attachments to my friends very often. If I did I'd send it via MSN or email it to them.

I can see the business & college need for email but for friend to friend communication Facebook messaging is already dominant.

But at least here in the US, every incoming first year student at a university in college has to have an email, and receives multiple emails per day from professors, administrators, etc. Email is still a huge part of the current college infrastructure, that could change, but I don't see it happening overnight.

So you never purchase anything online?

I still email occasionally but only when necessary. That's why I said I'm not a regularly user. My point is that I've never used email for friend to friend communication.

I'm a 30-somthing urban professional and almost no one I know still uses MSN or AIM. Tons of people use gchat and gmail, including people who used facebook first. Looking at my adium contacts right now, there are more people signed into gchat than facebook chat, only one signed into MSN and AIM.

My wife's friends are the same way. Sure, lots of them have facebook accounts, but all of her friends and business contacts, new and old, email and gchat regularly. She doesn't even have a facebook account yet and has no intention of ever setting one up.

In fact, I feel less pressure to use facebook these days than I did a year or two ago. I don't even go on it anymore other than when I'm working on apps that use the graph api. My wall is filled with stuff I don't care about and if I want to contact someone I email, chat or text them.

We live in the past here in New Zealand.

What's especially strange about this tend is how something like gmail blows facebook messaging away in terms of UX.

A lot of users though seem to have made Facebook their web world and are willing to accept a crappier messaging system for the convenience.

And it's not early adopters making the switch. I've been using FB for well over 6 years, but I still prefer to send an email over an fb message. Most of my friends are the same.

I think your comparisons are completely wrong. Is there anything you could do with land lines that you cannot do with mobile phones? No, but there are lots of things email does that Facebook does not do (and vice versa).

Send/receive faxes to/from a dedicated fax amchine, use an analog modem or coupler, connect multiple extensions to the same line, connect an Asterisk box, play DTMF tones into the receiver and have it dial, pulse dial by toggling the 'hang-up' switch...

That's all I can thing of right now.

>connect an Asterisk box

I'm pretty sure Asterisk can use a cellphone over Bluetooth.

True. I was talking personal use only because that's where mobiles have replaced land lines.

I may be being slow on the uptake not to have spotted this before, but it hit me last week -

99% of my personal mail - both email and physical mail - is either companies sending out notices (adverts, bills, whatever...) or websites I subscribe to telling me there's something I should see. Direct personal communication has very largely shifted off the platform.

Interestingly, that doesn't yet seem to be the case for corporate communication (into which I include somem voluntary work I do). I still send and receive plenty of email on that account, but this has me wondering for how much longer....

Cut that crap out. That's why people hate email. It is trivial in almost all cases nowadays to get off of those sorts of lists.

Today I have gotten emails: interview info from MS, an announcement as to why the University's power went out, payroll setup info for my Uni, tech advice from a startup friend, and an email from my TA about my lab today.

None of that would have been visible/accessible or possible to communicate to me through anything besides email.

Actually, that _is_ pruned. I'm only getting the notices I want / need for various reasons, not the spam, and do periodically dump senders who aren't interesting any more. Yet I still end up with eMail as overwhelmingly a commercial medium.

And Facebook basically still has those things that are the non-personal emails, they just took them out of the mail stream and put them into your wall.

He'll have an email address by the time he gets to college. There are still plenty of people who'd prefer to keep their personal and collegiate/professional lives separate.

Only about half of American teenagers end up in college.

How about looking at this way...every second person you meet is a college grad! :-)

Not everyone graduates so it is more like every second person you meet has attended college for some amount of time.

Especially amazing given that you need an email to sign up.

I can see his point: I see more and more family members who have an email but who don't use it at all.

Instead they are all reachable via FB.

You can sign up only using a phone number.

http://m.facebook.com/r.php

You can get a facebook account without an email address?

In my opinion, this is one of the most interesting questions on here. Facebook's default method of identification is and always has been (since thefacebook.com times) an email address.

If they are launching their own email client, it will be silly for them to require you to provide them with another email address in order to use their site. How will they authenticate people? Or they won't and there will be a ton of spambots with facebook accounts. Either way, I think it's an interesting question and I'll be interested to see their solution.

Given that email is already free, and spammers can register free email accounts, is that really any authentication?

I expect they'll just drop the requirement, and offer you an @facebook.com email during signup.

Mobile verification, I would think. I believe gmail already requires this for new accounts.

Gmail did the same thing, then added mobile number. Now...

... where 16 and under would mean 13-16. Facebook accounts aren't technically available to minors (under 13 years old).

My friends' baby boy had one at about 2 weeks old.

I know, the horror, the horror etc.

I doubt it. Most schools block Facebook, whereas most do not block Gmail (many rely on Gmail themselves). Using a Facebook email is just asking for accessibility problems.

Most students have cell phones that can access Facebook via dedicated apps, touch.facebook.com, or m.facebook.com.

Why would anybody need a work/school computer behind a content filter anymore?

You need an email address to sign up for Facebook and every time he signs up we write it down. So, he does have one.

Is that even possible? Can you sign up to Facebook without having an email address?

Initially you needed a .edu email to register. Then they opened facebook to everyone (any email). Now you don't you need an email address to register? Or did your brother used a throw-away email (gmail?) account?

Despite my occasional pleas, it's already the messaging service of choice between my friends and friends-of-friends. They say it's easier to add people to a discussion, and it's hard to fight the momentum.

Except last I checked you couldn't include people in existing threads.

Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

-- Jamie Zawinski

Wasn't facebook's justification for not letting you export your friends' email adresses because they weren't an email application? Now that Facebook does email, will they allow an email export?

The sad thing is that facebook itself is already somewhat of a "Gmail killer." I have a ton of people that will only contact me through facebook. When I ask why they don't use email they usually don't have an answer. The ones that do mumble something about convenience.

I have NO ONE who prefers facebook to email. Then again I'm not a very social person online. I use the Internet primarily for research (self-education, it's like a huge free library on my desk) ... and for business, and business users certainly do not rely on facebook for online communication. I doubt they ever will.

The answer is usually "because I never check my email".

I see this as a good thing. As others have mentioned here, FB messaging is more popular than email for a lot of people. This means I'll be able to communicate effectively with my friends who check their FB an order of magnitude more than their email (almost all of them,) using SMTP in any way that I choose rather than having to log into FB with all its attendant awfulness.

How does this news represent anything other than FB rewriting its inbox/messaging tool to operate over SMTP/IMAP? And how can that be anything but good? Okay we all wish they'd used the Wave Federation Protocol, but we can't have everything we want.

Personally I really don't want my email visible to Facebook. What would they do with my information? Google already set the precedent for leveraging email data _somehow_. If so, Facebook will probably push the boundaries while carefully marketing it so that users accept something they would not have just previously. I only have a problem with this because they're profiting from data that users would not have allowed them to sell to advertisers if they had known about the terms when signing up. So it's like a bait and switch and that makes me distrust them.

I think an interesting case here that will be affected here is how social circles were dealing that one stubborn Facebook holdout.

Before, there were two choices. Either move communication to email, or leave them out of the loop. Now the choice is easy, and it will all happen within Facebook.

Aside from the merits of this story, has anything that was branded "killer" by the media actually ended up being even moderately successful?

(The various iPhone killers, Facebook killers, Google killers, and so on come to mind...)

Presumably TechCrunch feels some affection for Google, and has decided to give facemail the tech-journalism kiss of death.

Android

Does anyone have any decent info on which free mail service is the most popular? I know a fair amount of people use any mixture of hotmail, gmail and yahoo. Perhaps 'killing gmail' isn't as big as killing hotmail/live/badabingmail.

I'd be very interested to see stats on this, but my money is on yahoo. Despite their decline in the US and Europe, they are massively dominant in Asia in search, shopping and mail.

I remember seeing stats recently. Hotmail, then Yahoo, then Gmail. Gmail have something like 100million users, and hotmail has 250(?)million I think.

Fairly recent [1] stats seem to point to:

  hotmail:  360m+ active accounts
  yahoo:    275m+ active accounts
  Gmail in 3rd, followed by AOL webmail [2}

Although yahoo! mail seems to have a more active user base as it's ahead on most site ranking systems [3].

Sources: [1] http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/metrics/email-statist... [2] http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/14/gmail-nudges-past-aol-email... [3] http://www.hitwise.com/us/datacenter/main/dashboard-10133.ht...

This is wild. When Facebook flips the switch, they'll instantly become the largest email service.

They'll actually have to get people to use it before being large (the whole "active" part). I'll never use it and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I closed my account few months ago, does this mean I will miss the revolution?

Isn't this the definition of feature creep?

Everything devolves till eventually it can check email. [someone more intelligent than me will find the source of that quote... I'm having a tough morning.]

The killer aspect of any facebook email project is that your friends are automatically white listed and in your address book.

Something tells me that now I am going to get an email in my Gmail for every email that I get in my facemail telling me I have a new facemail.

This should actually mean I don't need to visit facebook.com anymore if there is indeed POP3 or IMAP access, because (presumably) they will send full messages to Titan rather than the current "you have a new message NOW CLICK ME", and POP3 access to Titan means that I can get Facebook messaging through GMail.

The catch is probably going to be a lack of SMTP...

If Apple announces a new product, the world looks on with curiosity and awe.

If Facebook announces a new product, the world looks on with scorn and distrust.

How long till we see cellphones (not the purported FB phone) utilize just one source for your contacts? I just got a WP7 phone and had to merge all my contacts in from multiple sources, if instead MS just piggybacked off FB only, it would make things far easier for the end user. Also FB could claim "portability" to some degree (even if just with their partner MS)

Even if the thing turns out to be unbelievably amazing, I doubt companies would like people to be constantly logged in to facebook "for mail" during work. For many offices, a browser tab on facebook could just imply chit-chat with friends, farmville, and many other unproductive pursuits. How could it be a "Gmail Killer" with such a born defect?

aren't iphones the gateway from work to facebook?

Are there any for-pay gmail-like mail services out there offered by companies who aren't trying to make money by selling their users to their advertisers?

I use gnus at the moment, but it's starting to feel a bit long in the tooth. On the other hand, the thought of having all my email in a marketer's database kind of squicks me.

Google apps premier. No advertising

it seems convenient within Facebook but I would not like using a @facebook.com email address for serious communication. Imagine applying for college with such an address.

Is @gmail.com somehow more distinguished?

If you use @facebook.com You basically share your profile(at least profile picture)

At the risk of sounding flippant: So? Isn't your public facing Facebook profile picture easily discoverable anyway? If you're submitting, for example, a college application, they already have way more information on you anyway. The same goes for a job application.

I think so. It seems more neutral at least. I like facebook for whatever it is but not for professional use.

What do you mean "not for professional use"?

For most professional use, meaning "work", I use work's e-mail system (usually based on Exchange, but I guess that depends on where you work). If I apply to companies, do you think they really care what your address is?

I do some of the interviewing duties at work, and I can tell you my eyes pretty much skip over the e-mail part of the resume. HR needs it to e-mail them "your interview is on the 10/10 at 10:10am", but I doubt the HR person really cares about the address beyond copy'n'pasting it.

(Mind you, if I got work e-mail from a personal address, I would regard this as unprofessional behavior, but it doesn't matter if it's @gmail.com or @faceboook.com)

To me yes.

In a professional image scale I would definitively rank facebook.com less professional than gmail.com but maybe slightly better than WorlOfWarcraft.com

Is this the 2010 equivalent of wearing a jacket and tie? It seems we worked to escape the idea that conformity to arbitrary behaviours was more important than merit, only to replace them with a fresh set of meaningless distinctions.

yes and we'll now be the generation who cannot seem to reconcile themselves with the newer and supposedly more meaningless distinctions until the next ones come along.

@gmail.com is no @jdoe.net, but imho it's probably one of the most respectable free email domains.

What is @jdoe.net a reference to?

John Doe

Hi, one quick question: If you use @jdoe.net because it looks more professional, what would you use for the local part of the address? Does e.g. contact@jdoe.net look better than jdoe@gmail.com? I'm thinking when used for job applications and such.

john@jdoe.net is what I'd use, or if you have an uncommon last name like me and it's available as a domain name, john@doe.net and a blog at john.doe.net.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/email_address

don't you think people would google you anyway? that's the first thing i do when i receive an email from someone i don't know or a possible client. well at least before i started using rapportive.

I usually try to stop myself being overly protective of privacy. But - I already thought about leaving GMail several times to make sure that I don't rely on a big company that knows a lot about me.

Now Facebook, that would be an alternative. Uhm - wait a minute!

I do think they're going to pull this off though. Lots of people I know are still (happily) using the "older" services around, local free email providers, hotmail, whatever. A sexy webmail client, promoted by the site they use heavily? Sounds like a dealbreaker. Lots of non-technical people don't know Google as something other than a field to type searches into (or even rely on the browser search fields). Facebook could "educate" those to switch quite easily, I guess, given a good marketing strategy and some neat "integrate your mails with your status updates" features.

Ugh..

If Twitter is smart they will provide the smart ultra cheap fast answer: mailto:username@twitter.com with automatic forwarding to your actual email (that they know of already).

No brainer.

I hope that facebook users will use their twitter name to setup their facebook email adress, ie: use it as a very public address.

@jhr

Don't you guys think that it makes much more sense for Facebook to allow their users to hook up their email accounts (GMail, Hotmail etc.) via IMAP/POP and just be much better email interface with some extras?

Facebook could give priority sorting (based on your social graph), instant identification (kind of Rapportive features), and really easy to use and powerful address book (your social graph).

Now Facebook will have no excuse not to allow exporting of friends email address... well they will probably think of something else.

I doubt they could kill GMail, if there is one thing Google is good at is, fast and efficient interfaces, it may not be pretty, but who cares, it's an email client.

Does anyone else think, that this was the main reason behind the "GMail blocks import" story (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1877845)?

Google try to integrate social network with gmail (buzz) and failed. Now facebook is trying to integrate social network with mail and result would be fail IMHO.

Mail and "social networks" are different need.

I wonder if this has to do with the recent back-and-forth antics between Facebook and Google. It would make sense that Facebook wants a way for people to get their contacts out of Gmail...

O no, please! Why do they all have to turn into I-completely-want-to-own-your-Internet-life giants? Isn't doing one thing good enough, enough? Who needs yet another email service provider?

Another address people will just forward to their gmail. The article claims facebook has "the most popular photos product"... it may be true, but their "photos product" is shit.

Facebook is the new AOL

Well for me Gmail's killer is the build 1060 of Opera 11

called it: http://twitter.com/#!/savraj/status/2138507508 :)

Wow, can't wait to see all my personal contact info publicly available after writing a merry christmas mail to auntlisa@facebook.com

"Killer"?

Hard to make an email killer. Hotmail, for instance, is still incredibly popular, and will continue to be.

I was thinking about this when they launched username system, without knowing rumors about that.

You and everyone else.

I don't have a facebook account but idk about this. Will users get another username for their email address or use their vanity usernames? The under 18 crowd will use it because like another poster brought up, my brother also doesn't have a email address. He tried using mine.

Well, didn't they buy Drop.io? So obviously they're going after our emails. The interesting thing would be to see if they require people to adopt new email addresses or not

Social networking is lame.

Maybe I'm biased by having seen The Social Network, but does anyone else get the feeling that Facebook is motivated by hurting other people? I mean, when Google was starting to get big, it seemed like they were driven by their own creativity, by their drive to be awesome. But Facebook just always exudes this attitude of jealousy.

edit: Any of the downvoters care to explain? It's an honest question about two different companies - if you disagree, I'd like to hear what you think.

It's just business. They'll do what it takes to get new users and to keep them. The reason they will be giving away @facebook.com email addresses is the same reason why my mother in law won't get off AOL. She doesn't want to lose her email address.

Yeah - I get that, but unless I've just been spared from the darker side of business, I've never worked for a company that would have called something "The X Killer" internally. People are aware of their competitors and what they need to do to beat them, but it seems like an unusual focus to focus on "killing" someone else product than coming up with something customers want even more.

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