Facebook Ramps Up Competition

Facebook has ramped up contest with AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google with a product to opponent their email services.

Facebook Messages aims to tie users more keenly to the amicable networking site at a time when everybody is battling for their attention.

The product will join texts, online chats, and emails in to a middle hub.

Facebook mentioned normal email is as well slow and unwieldy and needs to step in to the modern world of messaging.

"This is not an email killer," Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg told reporters and analysts at an eventuality in San Francisco.

"Maybe you can help pull the way people do messaging more towards this simple, actual time, evident personal experience. Email is still unequivocally critical to a lot of people. We regard this elementary messaging is how people will change their communication," updated Mr Zuckerberg.

'Killer app'

In a box of bad timing, reports flush hours after the Facebook launch that Gmail suffered an outage.

The new service is seen as gift an substitute to Gmail, the fastest flourishing web service in the past year with over 193 million users according to information tracker ComScore.

The irony was that forward of the announcement, conjecture was abundant that Facebook's new product would be many crippling for Gmail. Mr Zuckerberg mentioned he did not see it that way.

"In reality they have a great product.

"We do not design any person to arise up tomorrow and say 'I'm going to close down my Yahoo Mail or Gmail account'.

"Maybe a day, 6 months, a year, two years out people will beginning to say this is how the future should work," mentioned Mr Zuckerberg.

AOL that at the week end previewed changes to its once renouned web letter service disagreed email is doomed.

"Email waste a of the hired gun apps on the internet," mentioned Brad Garlinghouse, AOL's comparison clamp boss of consumer products.

Industry researcher Augie Ray of Forrester agreed.

"Research you have completed shows you know that in the US 90% of adults examine their letter at least once a month and 59% of adults say they sustain a form on a amicable networking site.

"There is a large hole between the attain amicable media has and the attain email has."

Ease of use

At the heart of Facebook Messages is an bid to make sure users "see the messages that matter".

The new underline will facilitate how people talk either it be around text, present messages, online chat or email. All these messages will advance in to a feed well known as a amicable inbox permitting users to respond in any way they want.

Facebook mentioned around 70% of users continually use it to send messages to friends and and that a complete of 4 billion messages pass opposite the site every day.

"We unequivocally wish to capacitate people to have conversations with the people they caring about," Facebook's executive of engineering Andrew "Boz" Bosworth told BBC News.

"It sounds so simple. We have all this technology that should be enabling that but it's not. It's fragmenting that. So I have a review on email with my grandfather and other with my cousin on sms and all these things do not work the same way.

"I shouldn't have to fret about the technology. I should only have to fret about the person and the message. Everything else is only getting in the way," updated Mr Bosworth.

The new network will be modelled more on chat than normal email that means there will be no theme lines, cc or bcc fields.

Liz Gannes of technology blog AllThingsD mentioned she believed users will have a bit of a learning curvature on their hands.

"I regard the product is only not similar sufficient from what people are used to that it will feel unequivocally uncanny to users for a while.

"The insufficient of theme lines will obtain people anxious at initial and then of march they will may realize they never longed for them anyway."

'Game over?'

Other features add being able to store conversations so users can have a complete repository of communications with friends and family. Mr Bosworth likened this to a progressive value trove of letters stored in a box.

Incoming summary will be placed in a of 3 folders - a for friends, other for things similar to bank statements and a junk printed matter for messages people do not wish to see.

The product will moreover act for a dare to Yahoo with over 273 million users and Microsoft that has scarcely 362 million.

"For me currently represents the day when Facebook indeed becomes a portal on the turn of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL," Charlene Li amicable media researcher with the Altimeter Group told BBC News.

"They right away have to beginning creation their inboxes more social. Friends are the new priority as against to the conversation. This creates Facebook so much more functional."

Robert Scoble technology bard and owner of Scobleizer.com mentioned this product gives everybody something to target for.

"This is a new type of communications network but its not diversion over for Yahoo and Gmail and all the others since it will take decades to obtain people to stop carrying out normal emails.

"However this is something new and very absolute since Facebook can daub in to my amicable chart and make sure that only my friends are there and I won't obtain spammed."

Facebook mentioned this product was the greatest the amicable networking hulk had worked on to date.

The firm will moreover offer an @facebook.com email residence to every a of its more than 500 million users.