Update: Facebook Takes Aim At Google Gmail
The rumors were true. Facebook has announced “Project Titan,” a webmail client designed to take on Google’s Gmail service. The product, as revealed, gives users a “social inbox” to provide what Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg calls a “modern messaging system.” While it’s not an enterprise-ready solution, Facebook makes a compelling case for the future of the inbox. Here’s how.
Once again, The VAR Guy tips his hat to TechCrunch, which reported live from yesterday’s Facebook event. The gist of the announcement is that Facebook will be rolling out seamless messaging that keeps a conversation history whether you’re talking over SMS, instant message, e-mail, and Facebook messages.
Which is to say, it isn’t aimed at replacing any of the above, but rather unify them. While the company plans on offering @facebook.com e-mail addresses, you can use your existing messaging account with the service, apparently. But underscoring the new product’s lack of enterprise focus is the fact that it’s launching without IMAP support, forcing users to rely on POP access.
Facebook has certainly come up with an intriguing offering: it brings every major form of text communication we have under one metaphorical roof. And while The VAR Guy still doubts this is the first step to a Google-killing Facebook Apps suite, we have to wonder if this approach to blending the social network with all types of communication will be imitated in the channel.
And on a final note: didn’t Google try a new approach to combining e-mail and instant messaging? And how did Google Wave turn out?
Sign up for The VAR Guy’s Weekly Newsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. Follow The VAR Guy via RSS, Facebook and Twitter. Follow experts at VARtweet. Read The VAR Guy’s editorial disclosures here.
To be polite: Facebook is “flimsy” wrt handling personal information.
Putting more eggs in that basket isn’t a good thing. Even Google is more trustworthy than Facebook and Zuckerberg.
There are a coupple of upcoming solutions that will protect your personal information: Diaspora and OwnCloud. I expect webhotels to provide a package from Kolab for groupware and messaging.
Nokia provides developers and $ for Kolab. When Nokia launches their new premium line (MeeGO) more news should materialise.
I am moving away from “free” Email/messaging to personal and protected services.
Hey TVG, facebook should give you some free fb social e-mail blooger-google-wave type like thing to trial. Just sayin’.
The Melissa:
1. The VAR Guy likes free.
2. The VAR Guy likes trials.
3. But The VAR Guy ain’t a big FaceBook fan… Not yet, at least.
re Google Wave – I suspect a gazillion users were like me. Loved the idea, but there was no way I was going to run Gmail and Google Wave in parallel. I simply wanted the functions of Google Wave incorporated into Gmail, not a separate login with its own stream of communications.
I believe what Google should have done is offer an integrated Gmail/Google Wave product to the bleeding edge crowd and worked with it to refine a truly integrated communications box – umm, kinda like what Facebook is now talking about!
Amen Frank! PS: Ride the wave.
Frank, Melissa: Please let The VAR Guy know if you give Facebook’s offerings a try…
-TVG