By Sree Sreenivasan
DNAinfo Contributing Editor
For years now, I have complained about how awful Facebook's e-mail/messaging system is. I regularly post status updates and Twitter feeds asking — no, begging — people not to write to me via the FB messaging system if the item is even remotely important.
What makes the system so terrible? It doesn't do what other e-mail systems have been able to do for more than two decades:
* You can't forward a message someone sends you.
* You can't CC someone when replying to a message.
* You can't save messages to folders.
* You can't easily reply to e-mail message alerts you receive to your other email services.
I've also been predicting that if Facebook ever gets its act together and upgrades its email system (to even a 1995 level), it will become even bigger and more popular than it is today.
Clearly, Facebook has even grander ambitions than that.
Later today, Facebook is hosting an event at which it will unveil an upgraded e-mail system, which, according to multiple reports, is referred to internally as a "Gmail killer." Among the expected announcements is the launch of of @facebook.com (or something similar) e-mail address for consumers.
Gmail, the Google e-mail service, was revolutionary when it launched six years ago. As I wrote in Forbes last year, everything from its near-unlimited storage to its confusing-at-first threaded conversations to its lack of a delete button, made it revolutionary and millions got addicted.
But in Internet time, six years is an eternity and despite Gmail's many innovations since then (my favorite is the "forgot attachment detector"), I believe a revamped Facebook can have an impact on Gmail usage over the long run. Since people already spend so much time on Facebook, having a better messaging system there might reduce the time people go over to Gmail. Depending on the features, users might compartmentalize FB mail as being more personal and Gmail as being more work related.
Facebook and Google are taking on each other in several fronts, from employee hiring (Google just gave every employee a $1,000 bonus and 10 percent salary increase, in part to stem defections) to the selling of display ads to general web buzz. So it's only natural that they should tangle over email, too.
Meanwhile, Twitter stays out of this fray and can watch the two much bigger companies fight it out.
I'll be updating this column with whatever news the FB event produces.
What do you think? Would you switch? Post your comments below or on Twitter @sreenet.
Every week, DNAinfo contributing editor Sree Sreenivasan, a Columbia journalism professor, shares his observations about the changing media landscape.
