Facebook announces new Messaging Feature | Hacker News Reader

Facebook announces new Messaging Feature

blog.facebook.com

73 pointsspaetzel49 comments

So according to their blog:

“All of your messages with someone will be together in one place, whether they are sent over chat, email or SMS. You can see everything you’ve discussed with each friend as a single conversation.

I’m intensely jealous of the next generation who will have something like Facebook for their whole lives. They will have the conversational history with the people in their lives all the way back to the beginning: From “hey nice to meet you” to “do you want to get coffee sometime” to “our kids have soccer practice at 6 pm tonight.” That’s a really cool idea.”

I bet advertisers (Facebook's true customers, let's not forget), overzealous law enforcement officials, not-so-honest-or-nice politicians, and identity thieves, are also intensely jealous of future generations with access to entire records of conversations.

"They will have the conversational history with the people in their lives all the way back to the beginning"

As will Facebook. What a terrible thought.

Quite. We're talking about a company that's under commercial pressure to systematically learn all it can about you, in other words, to bypass/do away with your privacy. And has a person at the helm with a revolutionary zeal that's perfectly aligned with that commercial pressure.

Somewhat like Google+Schmidt.

Unless the company goes out of business or someone buys them out or they decide to limit history to 30 days... too bad Facebook doesn't let you export your data!

But it does ... look under "account settings" ...

Well, possibly easier access anyway, since Facebook owns Facebook conversations. But if you've never changed your email address, it's not much different right?

The analogy of "Grandma's letters" really breaks down when you consider that Facebook owns the conversation.

I don't know what the wider stats are on conversation fragmentation, or deletion, but my relationships with my friends are diffused through more platforms than email. Much to the annoyance of people whose progress in life depends on knowing everything about your relationships.

They're not offering email; they're trying to replace email with their own platform.

I hope everyone can see that would be a very bad thing, regardless of how nicely it works.

Email is an open distributed platform where everyone can set up their own mail servers and have control of their own mail. There are tens or hundreds of thousands of email systems out there. To replace that with a system whereby one company has complete control of your messages? Bad.

If what you say is pure speculation I would very much like to see some evidence from you because Facebook said nothing to that effect. Zuckerberg reaffirmed several times that they intend to work seamlessly with any and all e-mail out there.

This seems to me to be a long overdue and obvious overhaul of their crufty messaging system based on the realization that many people actually do not use e-mail anymore and rely instead on Facebook’s woefully inadequate messaging tools.

Since most of my non tech friends send me "email" through Facebook messages as it is, I suspect you are right and this platform will take off faster then Wave!

Didn't google try this with Wave ?

Please define "email" :)

To me, an email is basically an email address.

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

I'm going to be totally anal now. RFC 5321 obsoleted 2821 in 2008. Also, SMTP isn't the same as e-mail. Just like IMAP isn't the same as e-mail.

IMAP are POP3 optional. /var/spool/mail/$USER or ~/mobx were enough some time ago, although right now not everyone is running their own mail (smtp) server.

So is SMTP... How about LMTP?

IMO "email" is a combination of the various transport technologies and the message format.

That's not what your mom or dad would say! ;)

The good news is that lots of people are going to be able to send and receive email messages using email adresses.

Both these messages and adresses are rfc2821 compliant.

By Metcalfe's law, this can only increase the value of the email network.

Remember, first AOL was an island, then AOL offered an email gateway, and soon enough AOL became irrelevant.

I don't know if the same is going to happen with Facebook, but if it happens, I won't be surprised, for Facebook is like a second wave AOL, a much bigger wave than the first one, because this time it's like "everybody" participates, not just the early adopters.

Also, you can now request an invite here http://www.facebook.com/about/messages/

Why this won't have the same problems that Google Wave faced:

+ It incorporates existing modes of communication. You HAD to have a Wave account to talk to someone else on Wave, and the biggest issue for me when I got my account was that I didn't have anyone to use Wave with. Facebook doesn't particularly care in this case, it wants to aggregate ALL your communication. You'll stay in touch with your less techy friends who still email you or text you.

+ Large user base with existing friends list. Google Wave started you out from scratch.

+ Really smart product video. Most people didn't want to watch the Google Wave video or got confused by it, whereas Facebook's video is super clear about what it is. It focuses less on the cool tech (unlike Google Wave) and focuses completely on why you will want to use it.

If someone texts me will the message be available under my Facebook account? From what I see, no, so it's still not enough.

I think it will be.

"Today I'm excited to announce the next evolution of Messages. You decide how you want to talk to your friends: via SMS, chat, email or Messages. They will receive your message through whatever medium or device is convenient for them, and you can both have a conversation in real time. You shouldn't have to remember who prefers IM over email or worry about which technology to use. Simply choose their name and type a message."

The only feature I care about and what I've been hurting for for years is some means of segregating the Groups bacn. Some of most personally significant correspondences I've ever had are in my Messages Inbox. In the early days, it had a sentiment-noise ratio second only to a shoebox I keep in the back of my closet. Now it's 95% garbage from Groups/Events I value just barely enough to not unsubscribe from. I recognize the value of those messages given their own context, and I also recognize that the signal's dropped off since I'm no longer a 19-year-old drama whore.

But the simple ability to sort personal messages from mass bacn is still the #1 feature I've wanted from Facebook, through all these years of feed redesigns and app platforms.

Am I the only one who sees this as Google Wave Redux? I mean, they even hired the guy who created Google Wave.

The difference is that this exists within Facebook, not a "Google lab." People don't spend all day logged into Google Labs.

smells that way. the difference is that facebook understands why Wave failed.

Wave failed because it had no interface to existing services. From that facebook blog post, it looks to me like facebook messages will have "transports" to email, IM (icq, aim, jabber, ...?), phone/SMS.

That's important. Really important. That way, there's no way you "lose" your friends by adapting the new system. You can still reach them!

I'd love to have a seamless experience between ...

* short urgent messages (SMS) * short low-priority messages (IM) * long messages (email)

facebook messages promises that. i'm tempted to see for myself.

Yeah, but they had also hired the guy who created gmail ;)

Yeah, but Paul Buchheit did not work on this. He confirmed it somewhere on HN IIRC.

I can see this coming : in the news, facebook recycles google's open source wave protocol. In reply, Google closes wave protocol.

Google wave idea is good, but nobody really know what it is best for. For everything it does, there is something else that does it better and more focus. And I think part of the failure is mass adoption. They do not know what it is good for, but the launch only limits to a small amount of people. If they started day one for everyone to use it, someone some how might figure out what it is and how people should use it. By the time, I finally got an invite, after begging and begging, most people already moved on to something else.

Comparisons with Wave seem lazy.

Wave took something that worked and made it worse -- fewer contacts, bloated app, confusing purpose.

FB is taking something that works and making it better (for its users) -- more streamlined (like chat), less hassle (existing friends list), less noise ('Other' bin).

Certainly they took some lessons from Wave, and that's good, for all the flop it was it had quite a lot of good ideas, and the main goal, of making "a better e-mail" was also something I was supporting. Let's see, maybe this will mobilize others (Google) to try again.

Did anyone else notice the Chuckle Brothers in the photo? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuckle_Brothers)

They're down as the picture for Chris Piro.

Apologies for those uninterested in 80s and 90s UK kids entertainment, but it just seems so random.

That is absolutely superb. And probably grounds for a lawsuit. Wouldn't think paul and barry would be too litigious. That bloke who always hired them every week is probably well up for it though.

Whether or not it works, this seems like the right approach for FB. I definitely have had the experience of not knowing how to contact people (friends, parents, younger siblings.) People often talk about building something that solves a common problem and this does that. I think it will catch on.

The problem with this? (and all other attempts to change "messaging")

Is that it requires users to do something different than they expect or do currently. The goal of having a "unified inbox" won't work unless you natively integrate with all the places where somebody currently sends messages. This requires the user to change their behavior for what? To have a "unified inbox?" I don't think that's compelling enough for user to change their messaging behavior.

Google has the same issue with Google Voice.

For many people that won't be a problem - I think of those who already use Facebook inbox regulary, many of them already more often than e-mail. I've found out myself doing it more often recently. Why? It's easier and more convenient - when I write a message to John Doe I know exactly to who I am writing, with e-mail you have to remember which e-mail was whose, or which of the e-mails of Joe Doe that you have is that correct, latest one; and the same with phone numbers and SMSes. Yes, in a big scale of things, moving your communication with others to Facebook isn't the best idea ever, but in a day to day hurry you often forget about the great, big things and just stick to what's seems easier and faster now. That's why I think this has all the chances to actually be successful, for better or worse.

Agreed. And I see the larger vision.

Yes, it'll be easier. But I, for one, won't use Facebook Messages for SMS. Why would I text Facebook to text my buddy for me? When I can just select him from my address book?

All of a sudden the idea of unified communications and messaging is out the window.

What if you could use a facebook app on your mobile phone to text your buddy for free ?

As jwz would say:

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

"this product isn't email, but it lets people who do use email to connect with the rest of us"

Even Facebook seem to have caught the email is dead meme.

"keep this lookup table in my head"

Is this a pain point for anyone? Our contacts are stored in such a way that this is obvious, I can't send a SMS to grandma as she doesn't have a mobile.

> Is this a pain point for anyone?

Yes, I have several friends whose SMS, Facebook, and email contacts I have but who each prefer a different service.

The only flaw of all this is that vanity ids won't automagically become email addresses for everybody.

If I tell my friends to find me at facebook/kilimanjaro I want them to message me at kilimanjaro@facebook.com too.

They should associate and create 500M email accounts right away and become the greatest email provider on earth.

Does anyone here have already used it? I wonder about two things: file attachments, are they there? and 2nd thing: multi-persons conversation: can you add a new person to an already existing conversation? how does it work with chat or phone-messaging?

File attachments are present. They have updated Haystack, the photos infrastructure, to handle general file attachments.

I don't remember hearing if you can add some one to an existing conversation. But I clearly remember that they said that it was possible to remove some one from a conversation. Therefore, I assume, that they would have also thought of adding a person.

I think the issue with a unified inbox and the ability to push messages to different channels based on the recipient's choice is that a lot of time, the context of the message depends on the channel i choose to send it with.

The world of asynchronous and synchronous communication is going to clash in a very messy, destructive, apocalyptic Neo-versus-Agent Smith way.

For example:

1. SMS

When I send a message via SMS, it could be either to pass on information or initiate (continue) a conversation. Sometimes the content of the message isn't clear enough to highlight the context and when this happens between a boyfriend and girlfriend, the gates of hell can be opened, and the fury of a thousand suns going supernova is unleashed, usually on the hapless boyfriend (not a true story, I swear).

Or whether you should end the thread with 'ttys' or 'ttyl' or 'brb' as with IM protocol, and trust me, sometimes not continuing a SMS thread or not ending it nicely can lead to you having to spend money to say sorry.

Although I think SMS usage has been happening long enough that people generally tend to interpret context relatively well NOW, SMS communication sometimes do suffer from the problem of parties not knowing whether a conversation is supposed to be happening asynchronously or (relatively) synchronously.

If you have ever sent an SMS (usually to an attractive member of the opposite sex after a first meeting, or maybe a very prospective business contact) and waited for a few hours for a reply, frantically wondering if you had said something wrong, or that person wasn't interested in maintaining what looked like a blossoming relationship, then you understand how different perceptions of what mode a conversation is supposed to be in can sunder the social fabric.

2. Email

We tend to allow the intervals between subsequent emails in a conversation to be longer than SMS. After all, there is the general understanding that accessing and replying to one's email is harder than receiving and sending messages via SMS because of the ubiquity of the mobile phone versus Internet access on the move and the ease of entering a long form email versus sending a SMS. Also, it is easier for most to type long message when emailing than when sending a SMS due to the nature of the clients and where we actually do it (i.e. on the desktop). I usually switch to a more focused mode when reading emails because they generally are about work and are usually longer.

Subject headers in email are a great way to delineate threads. An email with a new subject is the start of a new thread.

3. Instant messaging

Instant messaging is clearly generally expected to be synchronous. When instant messaging, there are socially acceptable standards to start and end a conversation. The signaling has been learned.

Is it going to be impossible to learn the new social rules of engagement? I don't believe it will be so. However, I do believe that the lack of clear signaling of the context of a conversation (i.e. synchronous versus asynchronous, start of a new topic ...) could be disastrous.

Note: Maybe only some of us have to relearn. It could very well be the younger generation already know how to contextualize the messages without use of the various channels, subject headers ... If so, I'm curious how they do it.

Didn't seem to state whether the email will have POP3/IMAP access, if not this just seems to be an attempt to push more of our lives onto Facebook without a great amount of gain.

I just sent to my gmail a test email from facebook. 5 minutes on it hasn't arrived.

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