Earlier this week Mark Zuckerberg held a press conference to announce a new messaging service. I say service because it’s not the email program that everyone was expecting. That’s part of the package, but it’s a small part and an optional one.
This new system is actually about conglomerating all of your message services – email, SMS, chat – in one place. The big issue, as Facebook sees it, is that we have too many places to look for our text-based communication with one another. By building the system into Facebook, Zuckerberg hopes Facebook can become your complete social hub for the web.
It’s more than that, though. While working on this project, Zuckerberg talked to high school students about the way they’re using email. Turns out, they aren’t. It’s too formal, which I can totally understand. I can get upwards of a hundred emails a day, and that’s a far cry from the deluge that other tech professionals will see. I don’t need to see, “Hi Jeff,” or “Hello Jeff,” or “Jeff, how are you today?” from promoters and marketers or even my coworkers. I need information, and I prefer that it’s short and to the point.
Zuckerberg is obviously pointing at the end of email, or at least the kind of formal, subject-line message system we understand as email today. He can’t say that, though, if only because he’s Mark Zuckerberg.
