According to many sources, the Facebook event planned for later today at the Web 2.0 Summit will see the unveiling of their new email service. Codenamed ‘Project Titan‘ the service has caused much discussion across the Web, with predictions of its impact ranging from ‘game changer’ to ‘small step’.
Facebook Mail, already touted by some as a ‘Gmail killer’ will most likely enable users to choose their own @facebook.com email address. Facebook employees will apparently be moved to the recently aquired fb.com domain and have @fb.com addresses instead.
Integrated with Facebook.com
The service will be accessed from within Facebook and will run as an integral part of the site instead of being a separate entity. The new service is intended to keep users on the Facebook platform for longer, stealing time away from other major Web mail properties such as Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail and Windows Live Mail.
There’s additional speculation that Microsoft Office features and compatibility will be part of the announcement, building on the collaboration already in place between Facebook and Microsoft for the Docs office suite.
Initial Availability & Clever timing?
It looks as though Facebook Mail will initially be available to US users only, with other major Facebook using countries getting access to the new email service later in the year, possibly even in early 2011.
The announcement is due to come just days after AOL relaunched their email sevice, codenamed ‘Project Phoenix’, kicking sand in the face of the once-mighty Internet giant. Later today we’ll see just how big a step Facebook takes to dominating the Web mail marketplace.
UPDATE:
The event has taken place and Facebook have published a blog post about the new features.
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=452288242130
The rumours appear to have been partly true, Facebook members will be offered a @facebook.com email address but it’s not a Web mail service. It’s an update to the current Messages feature in Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/about/messages/
Search Engine Land liveblogged the event here.
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