Facebook Email service Dubbed a Gmail Killer

Today Facebook is announcing a launch for a new messaging system set to challenge the likes of Google’s Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. This special event is an invite only conference in San Francisco.

Whilst reports remain unconfirmed it is suspected that Facebook will be announcing its own email address @facebook.com which will consist of a fully fledged email system with the ability to email contacts attachments, images and videos just as you would with any other email provider.

Facebook currently boats over 500million users worldwide which make the successful launch of an email system highly likely. Facebook users are already very much open to reveal personal details through the social network because of levels of trust. Introducing the email service is likely to only reinforce loyalty and usage.

Everything from event planning, to users likes and even the frequency with which they interact with other users could be used to make the e-mail service an irresistible proposition.

We’ve already seen Bing and Facebook join to update search results and not with the new email service it is likely that it will work in conjunction with other Microsoft products such as Docs.com and Office. What’s more interesting is the mail.thefacebook.com is pointing to an Outlook Web App with a nice big Facebook logo. Could this be the way that users login to see their facebook email? Some suggest this is only for Facebook employees to login to their emails. Speculation remains.

According to Techcrunch Facebook’s new venture codenamed ‘Project Titan’ is being dubbed a “Gmail Killer”.

Facebook’s huge user base is seen as a potential treasure trove of information, especially for advertisers.

Analysts say the social networking firm, founded by Mark Zuckerberg, is becoming an increasingly powerful rival to Google because of the loyalty of its user base.

Google-Facebook rivalry has already been on high alert in the media and only increased recently amid a series of disputes.

Google has banned Facebook from importing its users’ e-mail contacts, a move it says it made because Facebook refused to allow the export of contact and friend data from within user profiles.

In reply, Facebook enabled a workaround that let users save their Google contacts to their computers before importing them into Facebook.

Google and Facebook have also become rivals offline, with Facebook reportedly offering Google engineers lucrative deals to defect across Silicon Valley.

Last week, Google awarded staff a 10% pay rise and will pay employees more of their total package through salaries instead of bonuses.

Analysts said this move was partly influenced by a desire to hold onto staff being wooed by Facebook.

Jesus Diaz of technology blog Gizmodo said that while Google had the most to be concerned about, other e-mail providers would also be worried.

“If I were Google, Yahoo or Hotmail, I’d be very nervous,” he says.

“Facebook Mail could be a killer, not only because of its potential instant size but because of its natural advantage at making mail more useful.”

Our thoughts

We think this is a great move from Facebook and will be a very popular service should it come to light. We will write again once we have heard more detailed reports about the service.

Our immediate thoughts are how this will affect the use of email marketing and social media and how the two marketing channels merge together. We are very interested to see how this develops and becomes yet another useful application in the online marketer’s toolbox.

Certainly the use of email to entice users to engage with social profiles through incentives and rewards is a huge aspect of the modern online marketing strategy. It will also make it a lot easier for users to login to read their emails, interact with contacts and switch between their social and email activities.

What do you think about the possibility of a Facebook email service? We want to hear your thoughts.