Facebook recently launched their latest feature for the social network: the brand spanking new Facebook Messaging System. At the moment it’s invite only but it looks to become a key feature of Facebook. Reading a great round up of the pro’s and con’s at LifeHacker, two points really stuck out for me so i’m just going to chat on about them. For the full monty just go over to the articles at LifeHacker, have a browse and make your own decision on what you think.
Facebook’s aim is to centralize your text-based communication into a single location, much like Google Voice has done for voice communication. It doesn’t really matter what device you’re using or how you want to communicate because Facebook will continue the conversation through the most applicable channel. You can switch computers and devices or modes of communication and Facebook will adjust right along with you.
If you’re skeptical of the usefulness of a centralized messaging hub, you don’t need to look much further than your smartphone to see how well it can work. Smartphones are great communication tools because they’re capable of combining all different types of communication (email, SMS, IM, voice calls/voicemail) into one easy-access location. Facebook’s new messaging service is attempting to lift this paradigm but bring it not just to your smartphone but your desktop or laptop computer as well.
It all comes down to trust, really, lot’s of people will cringe at the idea of Facebook becoming the central hub of their communication with anyone and everyone, but if i’m honest I wouldn’t have an issue with it. We already hand over so much information to Facebook they may as well put it to some use that will benefit the end user, I have a Hotmail account, a Gmail account, a Facebook account of course, and my phone which I obviously regularly receive text messages from. To have everything from all of those sources in one place would definitely be of convenience; i’m logged into Facebook whenever i’m connected to the internet so to be notified by Facebook whenever I get a text would definitely be useful considering I don’t check my phone too often - it’s a horrible old Nokia, hoping to splash out on a WP7 device next year when the prices come down. A lot of people will disagree with me that the Facebook communication hub (as i’m going to call it from now on) is a good thing, but that’s fine, it’s going to be opt-in anyways, if you have a problem with it, there doesn’t have to be a problem. As always the communication hub is going to be for people who want more.
Although I completely agree that the Facebook communication hub is the way forward, reading the con’s there was one point that just made me go: ‘Damn, that’s true.’
According to a report from last year by DNS service OpenDNS, Facebook was the second most commonly blocked web site on the internet, second to MySpace. You won’t find an email provider among that top 10 list.
That doesn’t mean that every workplace blocks Facebook or that no workplaces block Gmail, but the prerequisite to communication is access, and a lot of people who can’t access Facebook from work can still access their email accounts. In theory, Facebook Messages could get around this problem by sending you messages via SMS, but unless you want to do all your “emailing” from your phone, that’s not much of a solution.
The new Facebook communication hub is based on the key principle that all of your communication sources are aggregated in one place, emails, private messages, texts. I’m sure many working citizens will argue this will help their productivity but of course most workplaces, schools, colleges, pretty much anywhere (apart from Facebook HQ): will disagree. So, with most companies having already blocked Facebook, this feature is crippled before it’s even been officially launched. I think it’s a great feature, but with Facebook’s bad track record on user privacy and it’s bad reputation in the workplace for time wasting, the communication hub is going to have a hard time taking off.
