Facebook's 'Messages' Looks Promising and Familiar

by Somu Kandukuri, Director, Product Marketing

The big news this week was Facebook’s announcement of Messages, its unified messaging system which it says will make online communications feel more like a face-to-face conversation. Facebook wants to make messaging easier for its 500 million-and-counting users, by hiding the different modes of communication (email, SMS, chat, FB message, etc.) behind a streamlined interface where one simply “communicates.”

We are interested in seeing how Facebook’s users accept this new messaging experience. Facebook’s example of an American sitcom family notwithstanding, the reality is that today, different modes of messaging happily co-exist because they serve different purposes:

• Instant messaging and chat sessions are synchronous, that is, users expect an immediate response from the recipient.
• SMS communication is less synchronous (we text when we don’t want to call), but we expect a response to our SMS messages faster than we do email.
• E-mail communications are asynchronous which seems to fit best with people’s work communication needs and flow.

While we don’t see Facebook Messages as revolutionary (mostly because our Rich Mail product is also a centralized hub for every type of communication – e-mail, voice, tweets, SMS, MMS, chat and social networking), we do see promise in enabling users to receive these messages across platforms in the mode that suits them.

Some of Facebook’s changes (the facebook.com email address, messages organized by conversation, social inbox) put them on the right path towards making messaging simpler for their end users and shaking up the competitive email landscape.

We hope our operator customers are watching.