Facebook rolls out full webmail and text messaging system

This morning UK users logged in to Facebook to find that messaging has been given a big overhaul. There’s a new interface and the long-promised email system has finally been implemented. This means that every user can have an @facebook.com email address, which they can use to communicate with friends who don’t use Facebook themselves. Another feature of the service allows you to register a mobile number, so friends can then contact you via text message.

As with many changes to Facebook, privacy issues abound. Key concerns include: that messages can only be archived and not deleted, how much information will be kept about non-Facebook users who contact you at your Facebook address, and exactly how your emails’ content may or may not be tied in to advertising content. Facebook’s already patchy history of privacy concerns and communication with its users won’t do it any favours here.

However, assuming you’re happy to use Facebook Messages for all your online communication needs – and many people will be – how easy is it to use? It’s early days, and there are bound to be a few teething problems, but we’ve put the mail system through its paces.

TALK TO THE FACE

It’s easy to set up and every stage is clearly annotated and explained. Any step in the process can be skipped and dealt with later – this also means that you don’t have to create a Facebook email address at all if you don’t want one.

It’s very easy to get started

The first step is to register your Facebook email address. Ideally, you’ll want your real name, but the more popular ones have already gone, as our Tom Morgan discovered. Those of us with more unusual names are less likely to run into trouble.

The main interface for your Facebook Messages account is a slightly sleeker version of its previous incarnation. It’s been divided into two sections: Messages and Other. Messages contains only private messages from your Facebook friends. The Other section includes emails from non-Facebook users, as well as all the messages from Facebook Groups that you’re a member of. If you subscribe to a large number of groups, the Other index will be cluttered before you even start receiving emails.

In both the Messages and Other sections, all messages from the same source are run together into a single conversational thread, including older messages that were previously divided by subject. This has more in common with the way iOS and Android smartphones handle text messages than with any traditional email client, and we found it intensely annoying. Because of the lack of subject headers, messages sent to non-Facebook email addresses are always headed “Conversation with [your name]”.

No subject headers for Facebook

The lack of subject headers makes Facebook Messages a poor candidate if you like to carry on multiple discussions about different topics with a single person or group of persons, but its simplicity will doubtless appeal to many users, particularly those who never got to grips with the structure of traditional emails in the first place. An effective search box makes it easy to find individual messages if you know what keywords to look for.

PHONING IT IN

Once you’ve set up your email address, you’ll be given the option of enabling Facebook’s text messaging service. This allows your friends to use Facebook Messages to send text messages to your phone. This is either incredibly useful, particularly for dumbphone users who don’t have internet access while they’re out and about, or incredibly intrusive. Fortunately, you don’t have to sign up for the service.

Setting up text messaging

Another handy option for those with privacy concerns is that you don’t have to publish your phone number. The default option adds it to your profile, but you can keep it secret. Doing this allows Facebook friends to send you texts but doesn’t reveal your number to them.

We hit some technical problems when we first tried to register our phone with the service, but everything went smoothly by the time we made our second attempt. It’s a fast and convenient way of allowing friends to reach you quickly when you’re away from your PC, but it’s less clear who will be paying for these texts. Based on the message we received from Vodafone when we registered, which informed us that “SMS charges may apply”, texts will probably be charged to the recipient, but there’s little information available one way or the other.

VERDICT

Facebook Messages has a few nice features – we were particularly keen on the ability to let our friends send us text messages without giving away our phone number. However, the whole system feels clumsy and lacks polish – Facebook has a long way to go if it hopes to rival Google’s Gmail.

The inability to ever delete anything is also troubling – you’ll never be able to forget ill-advised 3am declarations of drunken love. With the convenient default assignment of firstname.lastname@facebook.com email address, it’ll also be a tempting target for spammers – only time will tell how spam-resistant the system will be.

Despite its obvious flaws and limitations, it’s equally obvious that a lot of people will use Messages for email. A significant percentage of web users already use Facebook as their main interface for all online interaction, and it’s these people who will most enthusiastically adopt their facebook.com email addresses. Love it or loathe it, Facebook Messages has a built-in audience, and we’ll be surprised if it doesn’t take off in a big way.