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

Anders — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:38:56 +0000

Call me a FaceBook curmudgeon, but I’ve never really been too crazy about it. It seems to be just another thing on the web to occupy your time. The only good thing, I’ve found, with FaceBook is that it has allowed me to connect with some *very* old friends, who discovered my page there (tho I think just googling my name may have been easier…) Someone I was talking to the other day also (to whom I was doing some venting) reminded me that FaceBook can be great for creating virtual communities, which certainly is the case. One reason FaceBook is great for that is because many of the people you’d want to have join your community already are signed up, so they don’t have to register for yet another web app. But that will only remain true as long as FaceBook is remains the in-vogue app.

But getting to my main point, I think my biggest pet peeve with FaceBook is when people who have my email address message me via FaceBook. Why oh why do you do this? It just seems like all it does is create an additional obstacle in the communication process, since I get the message that you messaged me in my email inbox anyway. Maybe I’m just not a sufficiently enlightened FaceBook user to understand why this roundabout way of communicating is a good thing. Is it just a way of saying “Hey, I use FaceBook, I’m cool” or is there some actual functional or feature benefit to doing this?

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