[edanm]

Personally, I think Facebook's killer app is that it fixed email.

For a huge population, email never worked very well, mostly since they had to find out someone else's email to talk to them. Facebook fixes this completely for any personal email use - all your real-life friends are friends on Facebook.

I'm guessing a huge percentage of personal mail has moved from email to Facebook messages - does anyone have any data about this by any chance?

[nanairo]

Sad but I've got the same impression. The scariest bit for me is that people with whom I was exchanging emails, are now sending me FB messages instead.

That is to say they already have my email address, it's there probably memorised in their email app, and yet they use FB.

That's one scary power FB got there. Suddenly email is not open anymore. (Though I don't blame FB for it: they did business, didn't force it down anyone's throat).

[sprout]

What scares me is the other week I sent a Facebook message that should have been an email, largely because a different friend in the same social circle had sent me a Facebook message on a similar subject.

It's really hard to use Facebook without it taking total control of your social interaction.

[StavrosK]

Use Opera, some things on Facebook break and then you'll prefer email rather than launching another browser. Works for me!

[edanm]

First time I've seen someone recommend a browser because things don't work in it! :)

[StavrosK]

Haha, it's a feature!

[gaius]

Another thing FB effectively fixed, app invites notwithstanding, was spam.

Probably lots of kids these days don't even know this, but there was once a time when your (probably only) email address was supplied by your university or employer. If two people moved, it was easy for them to lose contact with each other until a "chance" encounter (e.g. seeing them post on Usenet or whatever). Facebook solved that problem by making everyone's address book self-updating.

[chc]

That was already fixed by the time Facebook came around. Hotmail was offering addresses that weren't tied to your uni or employer in 1996.

[notahacker]

It also fixed event invitations extremely well. Events is Facebook's killer app it barely realises it has...

[asdfer]

This is the main reason I always hear that people are 'forced' to stay on FB, even if they don't like it: so they can still get invited to parties.

[johns]

That's just (somewhat justified) laziness on the party organizer's part since you can add people to Facebook events that aren't on Facebook by entering their email address. They get a normal invite and chance to RSVP. Facebook membership not required.

[jasonlbaptiste]

Hmm, facebook mail is absolutely horrid. It's a combination of spam messages and just contact that I will never read. I have 1000+ unread messages.

I actually read a fb message in my normal email box and if it's something actually valuable, ill then respond on FB.

[almost]

> I actually read a fb message in my normal email box and if it's something actually valuable, ill then respond on FB

And that's the important bit, people seem to either check FB mail directly or read it in there own email. Either way you've got more chance of getting through to them soon if you send via Facebook... I don't like it either though, it makes me rather uncofortable to have more comunication going through FB.

[mambodog]

Facebook didn't fix email with its Facebook 'mail', it did it with wall posts, comment conversations, and events.

[mdh]

This.

My experience with non-geeky friends is that they check facebook for messages and interact with friend/family through comments and wall-posts. Some of them get email notifications for these things but they use them as a prompt to go to facebook.com to view and respond. Email is the medium but not the message.

[christonog]

I don't think it's changed e-mail as much as it is changing mobile messaging (SMS). With notifications on mobile FB apps, you can easily bypass SMS to communicate with other friends either at their computer or on their phone.

There are still other e-mail features FB private messages don't offer: forwarding message threads, attachments, email subscriptions, etc.)

[whakojacko]

Those can all be fixed easily enough. When (not if) facebook finally launches a full-featured email service, it will probably dominate gmail/yahoo/microsoft. You would get a address @fbmail.com or whatever so you could still use it as your "normal" free email client. But you then also get easy communication with all your friends, since facebook already knows how to contact them and can do so bypassing traditional email alltogether (since the messages stay entirely within facebook's data centers). Not to mention tying in to their existing products-If you got an event invitation (sent to your fbmail since you no longer check your gmail) it could show you all the details (no reason it couldn't do that right now) and which of your friends are going etc right in the email.

[luxative]

An interesting link in the context of your point: http://www.aweber.com/blog/email-marketing/email-and-faceboo...

Note 1: check out the embedded video Note 2: take the rest of the content with a pinch of salt; this is an email marketing vendor's blog!