Facebook is by far the leading social networking service in the world, with well over 500 million users worldwide (and about eight million of them here in Malaysia) but it is not resting on its laurels.

In the past few months it has launched Facebook Places , its geo-location service, and relaunched Facebook Groups , which is now a collaboration platform.

Last week it announced Facebook Messages , which is its revamped messaging service that includes e-mail and more.

mkini facebook In the weeks leading up the announcement of Messages , there was intense speculation that that Facebook was creating a so-called Gmail killer.

Some even dubbed it "Fmail". Turns out, it's not a souped-up, heavy duty e-mail offering at all but an integrated communications service with e-mail as just one of its components.

In a nutshell it's an attempt by Facebook to bring together Facebook's messaging system, e-mail, chat and even SMS all in one social inbox.

As part of the service, Facebook will be offering every Facebook member an e-mail address of their own based on the user's profile username.

So, in my case, my Facebook e-mail address will simply be oonyeoh@facebook.com. It will take a few months for this feature to roll out though.

 Not regular e-mail

Facebook's e-mail system is not exactly like regular e-mail. One key difference is that there is no subject lines involved.

Facebook's rationale is that Messages is supposed to be more informal and represent actual conversations, so they did away with things that make the conversation too formal-looking.

So, in that sense Facebook ' s e-mail is more like a text message: No subject lines, no cc, no bcc, and you can send a message simply by hitting the "Enter" key.

If someone sends you a message from an e-mail system that includes subject lines (basically any other e-mail system), that subject line appears in bold as the first line of the message within your conversation.

Like other e-mail systems, you can attach photos, documents and even videos with your messages. These can be existing files that you have on your computer or you can set it up to take and send new pictures and videos using your laptop's camera.

The natural question for Facebook fans is whether you should ditch your existing e-mail system for Facebook's .

The answer is that it's never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket.

google and yahoo Your primary e-mail address should not be one that is tied to any social networking service. What if one day you don't want to be on Facebook anymore?

It's much better to have a standalone web-based mail like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail .

Also, bear in mind that Facebook gets blocked in some offices. So, you won't be able to access your mail from work if that's the case with your office.

Anything new Facebook has to offer will always raise the issue of privacy concerns. And with Messages , the concern is spam.

With your Facebook mail address being based on your Facebook profile name, it makes it quite easy for spammers to guess your e-mail address (most people do use their real names on their profiles).

However, there is an option to block or reject mail that's from an unknown address. Facebook will also by default employ filters. E-mail from friends and their friends goes directly into your main messages folder. everything else goes to the "Other" folder.

Facebook says that spam and bulk email will automatically go to the "Other" folder, but of course we won't know how effective that is until the service is rolled out.

facebook groups What can a person do if they are not comfortable with potential privacy issues relating to Facebook Messages ?

A while back there was some outrage about Gmail scanning your mail for keywords to deliver targeted ads to you. My stance back then was the same. Nobody's putting a gun to your head and asking you to use Gmail . If you don't like it, don't use it.

It's probably worth mentioning that Facebook has said it will not be scanning messages for advertising or internal optimisation purposes. This is a pleasant surprise.

But then when you think of it, it doesn't have to. Facebook already knows quite a lot about you from your profile alone, which it does data mine.

 

OON YEOH's new social media book 'Like Me, Follow Me' is published by MPH. You can connect with him via Facebook and Twitter .