Facebook Mail

On Monday Facebook is holding a special event.  Several sources indicate that Facebook is about to announce the launch of their fully fledged webmail client internally known as Project Titan.  Some refer to it as a Gmail killer.

Many people will say: ”Yet another webmail service, just what we need. I already have my Gmail or Hotmail account. Why would I want to use Facebook”.

 

Contacts

I have a lot of contacts which I only mail sporadically, they are not in my contact list and I don’t actively keep track of their e-mail address.  And even when they are in my contact list, keeping this list up to date is a drag. 

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you just have to type in the persons name to add them to the list, always with their most recent e-mail address:

This feature alone would be reason enough for me to switch from Gmail.

Spam

Spam is a huge problem.  While Gmail does a decent job at filtering out anything harmful and undesirable, there are still enough that get through.  Or what about those pesky services that force you to enter an e-mail address and then keep sending you e-mails even if you already opted out several times.   Wouldn’t it be great if you could choose to only receive mails from “Friend” and “Friends of friends”?   Sure this isn’t for professional use but on a personal level it would certainly be an option I’d use.

Ace up their sleeve

One big ace that Facebook has that makes it likely that they’ll deliver a decent and usable product is Paul Buchneit.  While most of you won’t have a clue who Paul Buchneit is, you certainly have heard of the product he created and was the lead developer for: Gmail.

Paul went from Google to Friendfeed which in turn was acquired by Facebook.  So Facebook certainly has the know-how in house to pull this off.

Strategy

Starting a webmail service certainly makes sense in the larger Facebook strategy.  Facebook is trying to interweave itself with the internet in such a way that they become indispensable (think of Facebook connect which is used in so many websites) so offering e-mail (still the most used way of online communication) is a logical step. 

I’m looking forward to Monday and will be trying their mail solution if and when it becomes available.