- Private Messaging on Facebook, All in One Place
- Your Own @facebook.com Email Address
- Getting Started with Messages
- Using Messages
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Your Own @facebook.com Email Address
Here’s something else new in Messages: your own @facebook.com email address. That’s right, you can finally have a private email address that’s linked to your Facebook username and account. (Your new address is your Facebook username followed by @facebook.com, like this: username@facebook.com.)
Having your own Facebook email address makes it easy to communicate not only with other Facebook members, but also with users outside of Facebook. Your Facebook friends see your email messages just like private Facebook messages, with no subject lines, cc’s, or the like; non-Facebook users see traditional-looking email messages.
Facebook’s new email system also simplifies things for those sending emails. You don’t have to enter a subject line, you can’t cc or bcc anyone on your messages, and you don’t have to click a Send button; the message is sent when you press the Enter key on your computer keyboard.
The email messages you see in Messages look more like Facebook’s previous private messages. Individual emails are organized into “conversations” by sender, so you have all your messages from one person in a single place. There are no folders or subfolders for organizing your messages.
Facebook email, then, presents a different metaphor than that employed by traditional email programs and services. Messages isn’t like Microsoft Outlook or even Gmail; you get your messages Facebook’s way (organized by user), with no other options available. Like I said, it’s different, but it seems to fit well within the Facebook universe.
What a @facebook.com email address does is let people who aren’t Facebook members communicate with you via Facebook. If you spend your entire waking life inside the Facebook interface, you can now receive messages from your non-Facebook friends. All you have to do is provide them with your new @facebook.com email address, and you’ll receive their emails from within Facebook, in the new Messages center. It makes the site a one-stop messaging shop for diehard Facebook users.