On Monday, it is almost certain that Facebook will announce ‘Project Titan’ — a web-based email client that has been unofficially referred to internally as its “Gmail killer” for almost 6 months.
It’s unclear whether Facebook is just rolling out a substantial upgrade to its current messaging system, or creating a new web-based entity (similar to Gmail) with the focus of full Facebook integration and features.
The sky’s the limit if Facebook does in fact develop a full-fledged webmail client. It has the world’s most popular photo product, the most popular events product, and soon will have a very popular local deals service as well. It can tweak the design of its webmail client to display content from each of these in a seamless fashion (and don’t forget messages from games, or payments via Facebook Credits).
There’s also the social element: Facebook knows who your friends are and how closely you’re connected to them; it can probably do an impressive job figuring out which personal emails you want to read most and prioritize them accordingly.
Imagine a world where Facebook lives within your email. You could organize events with your friends, look at photos without having to attach them and start threads with people you know and trust. The big question is, does Facebook need an email service to accompany its social networking platform?
Time will tell. Google Wave wasn’t exactly a success, and it’s goals were pretty similar to Facebook’s, which include ‘revolutionizing email’. Then Google figured out that no one wanted email ‘revolutionized’, which is why in large party email hasn’t changed for almost 15 years. Interestingly, the Google employee that created, designed and marketed Google Wave was recently hired by Facebook.
What are your thoughts on Facebook’s ‘Gmail killer’? Perhaps email.facebook.com has a nice ring to it.
via Techcrunch, Simplyzesty
