Comments on: Why do people who have my email address message me via FaceBook?

By: Anders

Anders — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:36:05 +0000

Interesting points – good to get a different perspective – thanks for your thoughts!

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:51:45 +0000

As an IA I’ve wondered about this myself – but as a regular Facebook user I’m afraid that it does make perfect sense. It’s just *easy*.

As a message sender there’s no wondering what email address is right for someone, no geeky bouncebacks or non-delivers, no finding peculiar at- or underscore-signs on your keyboard, no plethora of addresses associated to a variety of slightly different ‘friendly’ names for the same person. You just type your friends name, it appears with their photo, and then you write a message. And it’s guaranteed to get through to them.

There’s also the security angle, that facebook messages can’t be forwarded-on, BCC’d or copied in to other people on reply. So your message is relatively safe.

As simple and effective as email is, there are some issues with the hotmail/gmail/yahoo! mail using public’s user experience, and Facebook have plugged that gap to a certain extent.

By: PA

PA — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 16:54:22 +0000

From the practical point of view, many people use bad webmail systems without decent support for contacts. Facebook makes it easier for them to send the message without remembering and typing the email address.

What is more, most people have not configured the photos of people to their mail clients whereas Facebook ads them automatically, providing a more personal experience.

Myself, I try to stick with Mail and am happy that Facebook nowaday includes the original message in its notification emails.

(BTW, I happened to land on your page while googling for an image of an iPod remote.)