http://www.thestar.com/business/article ... today?bn=1With nearly 500 million users, Facebook is about to launch its own email service, instantly making itself the biggest messaging network in the world, tech experts report.
The social network has announced a news conference at its San Francisco headquarters at 1 p.m. Eastern time.
Facebook has declined to elaborate on the subject of the news conference, but the press invitations carry a message icon.
“There is a huge opportunity for these guys to fundamentally change the nature of email,” said Matt Cain, an analyst for the research firm Gartner, told the San Jose Mercury News.
TechCrunch.com, which first reported on Facebook’s email Project Titan in February, says the new messaging system is called “the Gmail killer” inside Facebook headquarters.
Facebook email “would be able to perfectly separate what is important from what is not,” TechCrunch’s Jesus Diaz reports.
“Their data tracking and analysis could allow them to do many other things. They can automatically classify mail from the person who just became your fiancé or lower the priority of that ex who keeps mailing you,” he said.
“Ultimately, that’s what people – especially younger generations – like about Facebook. It's always prioritized communication, a closed playground.”
Hotmail still dominates worldwide email, with 364 million users, but Facebook could outstrip that if all of its users signed up. Yahoo has 273 million users, and Gmail, 193 million – a 21 per cent increase in the last year.
Google and Facebook already have a rocky relationship. The search-engine giant last week prevented Facebook users from importing their Google contacts into the social-network site.
Yahoo has retooled its email service recently so users can integrate their Twitter and Facebook accounts to let friends know their status.
is this really necessary....??? FB sucks!
