Facebook created a system where users were able
to create usernames for their profiles, so instead of a long number in
their domain, a name like jsmith would appear. Facebook also had rolled
out an email service
for its users who would have a name@facebook.com and could communicate
with other users of Facebook or even other services like Gmail, Yahoo!
and Hotmail. Because the two services were launched at different times,
users may not have created a username for their Facebook profile, while
they did for email (and vice versa). Now, according to Mashable,
Facebook is rolling out a program where the two usernames of both
services will be synced (unless you have already chosen different
usernames for both services, those will remain unaffected).
So now, if your Timeline username is jsmith, your profile address
will be facebook.com/jsmith and your e-mail address will be
jsmith@facebook.com. Another service, which has deep email and social
networking integration is, you guessed it, Google. While Facebook is
popular for social networking, its e-mail service has not really caught
on and this move to integrate usernames might be directed at increasing
usage of Facebook e-mail. Facebook even launched a Messenger app
in 2011 to consolidate all Facebook communication in one place. The
company launched an update to the app to remove cc and bcc from the
'e-mail' service to call it strictly messaging. Through this app, users
could reply to another user's chat, e-mail and text messages as well as
add information like location and photos.
The big draw of Facebook e-mail was what they called the 'social
inbox'. What it does is it pulls data from the social graph and informs
your inbox of which people you communicate with most frequently. It also
pulls information on which messages are more important (if you'll
notice now, Facebook messages too are seperated by important messages
appearing in the main messaging inbox and unimportant messages appearing
in a folder called "others"). This whole system was set up to take care
of spam. Do you use Facebook e-mail? If you do, is it your primary
e-mail? Let us know in the comments section below.