Facebook webmail?
There are strong smoke signals coming from numerous camps that Facebook is about to launch webmail.
Now, for the non-geeks, that’ll mean you’ll have an extra email address (rumoured to be your vanityURL@facebook.com – jedhallam@facebook.com) and you’ll be able to get Facebook mail through Outlook, Thunderbird, on your phone etc.
This could be quite cool, and it does fit with the idea that Facebook wants to represent your entire online identity, rather than just being a part of it. It would also probably fill the expectations that Google Wave failed to meet – with over 350 million people on Facebook, would this make email more popular? I think so – people could quite easily move to sending each other emails over texting, and Facebook would make that much more accessible and less of a cultural change than it would be now.
Oh, and the rumour goes that the project is called Titan. Which I think is a bit rubbish as far as names go, maybe call it ‘emailkiller’ or ‘longsmsthingy’.