Facebook To Revamp Messaging Service

Facebook is revamping its messaging service.

The popular social network unveiled its plans in San Francisco on Monday.

Blogs had been buzzing with speculation, a big one being that Facebook will announce an e-mail service, its answer to Google Inc.’s Gmail.

But Facebook says e-mail will be just one component of its plans. CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company doesn’t believe e-mail is going to be a modern messaging system.

The announcement comes a day before Zuckerberg speaks at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

“Between mobile devices and the Internet we can be more connected today than ever before, but there is still a feeling that the technology can also act as a barrier between us,” said Joel Seligstein, Facebook software engineer. “When I want to share with someone it should be as simple as deciding who I want to share with and what I want to say. It should feel more like a human conversation. 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.

“We are also providing an @facebook.com email address to every person on Facebook who wants one. Now people can share with friends over email, whether they’re on Facebook or not. To be clear, Messages is not email,” Seligstein said. “There are no subject lines, no cc, no bcc, and you can send a message by hitting the Enter key. We modeled it more closely to chat and reduced the number of things you need to do to send a message. We wanted to make this more like a conversation.”

Read Seligstein’s full blog on the messaging revamp here.