At the scheduled Facebook event, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a revamped version of Messages feature for the social network. New Messages unifies the messages received via email, SMS, chat or Facebook message in to one Social Inbox. Last week, Facebook was rumored to launch Project Titan, a Gmail killer service for Facebook. In a way, Facebook certainly earned some brownie points for including all email, SMS, chat and message into one Inbox and allowing users to start a real-time conversation.

 

Facebook Messages is quite a handy feature to share messages amongst friends. Messages is an invite-only feature at the moment. Every Facebook user who wishes to use Messages as his new 'email ID' would be given an @facebook.com email address. Will this Messages system with unified social Inbox and real-time threaded conversations affect Gmail? We'll talk about that a bit later. First, let's take a look at the features of Messages:

Unified conversation:
Facebook is a widely used social network not only on desktop but also on mobile phones. Several young kids are addicted to check their wall and notifications via cellphone after every few minutes. Messages will bring SMS, chats, direct messages on Facebook and emails - all on one location. For adding emails, users will have to activate the optional Facebook email address.

Users can get spoiled further with the new easy message compose options. They will just have to choose the name of the recipient and type out the message to be sent - No Carbon Copy, no Blind Carbon Copy, No subjects. It is more like a chat conversation wherein you just click on the user's name and start chatting. Facebook claims that the conversations would happen in real time.

Threaded real-time talks:
Whatever conversations that take place on Facebook Messages will appear in form of threaded conversations between you and the contact. All SMS, chat, Messages and Emails between you and your friend would appear in form of a thread and thus you'll have a history for all the messages exchanged. At any point of time you can leave that long threaded conversation and start a new one. Of course you'll get to revisit that history of conversation later.

Social Inbox:
By default, Facebook will show you messages only from your friends and their friends in the Inbox. Any other messages from users not on Facebook would appear in a folder named Other right below Messages on the left column. You can easily move those conversations to Messages Inbox to receive all future conversations in there. Facebook also offers a Filters option under account settings to restrict receiving mails that aren't sent by any of your friends. In short, you get to choose whose messages and mails you want to receive.

Security Concerns:
In the past, Facebook has faced several phishing and hack attacks. The social network has been struck with koobface and other worms a number of times. Hence, I'm a bit skeptical about how spam-free and other nuisance free the new Messages would be. Undoubtedly Facebook's security team has taken precautions against such attacks and blocked all the holes. But you never know if an innocent user's account is misused for sending spam to several other users.


Google's Take on Facebook Messages:
Facebook launched new Messages system at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. A couple of hours later, Google CEO Eric Schmidt was present there and showed off the upcoming Nexus S smartphone as well as Gingerbread with Near Field Communication Support. On being asked about Facebook's new Messaging system, Schmidt declined to comment. Instead, he told Computer World, "We're actually pretty happy with Gmail. Right now, it's all about its terrific, wonderful growth. People use Gmail because of its speed and its searchability. Its core design has been around speed and searchability. Gmail is doing very well. We're happy to have the market expand."

It is quite early to say if Facebook Messages would take up on something as big as Gmail. I mean, it might attract the social network addicts who just want to stay in touch with all their friends. Not to forget, Facebook is still a social network while Gmail is a proper web-based email service. However, web-based email services providers - Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail are making their services more social. Looking from a social network addict's perspective, Messages is a perfect feature for a lazy and laid back lifestyle.