Apparently there’s been a few rumors going around that Facebook is re-developing their messaging system to create an all-together new emailing platform (as we traditionally understand it).
The LA Times reports about the “Gmail Killer” and that it just “makes sense.”
What does this mean for the Church and ministry? Could you imagine an entire ministry-based communication strategy on Facebook? Would that be beneficial or prohibitive? Freeing or make you more handcuffed?
My perspective is this: I just can’t see Facebook being a primary means of communication or any one single platform for that matter.
That is, unless, we can create an unobtrusive, high-value and strategic aggregation system that provides exceptional management of data to and from it’s ministries and people.
A strategic communication platform perhaps.
What’s your take?
Tom says
My initial reaction is hype.
“Gmail Killer.” Hardly. Think about the business sector. Next, there are too many people that utilize Gmail because of its sapce, its search, its labels, and its chat. Not to mention that you can plug-in multiple email accounts or POP/IMAP it with other clients.
“It just makes sense.” To whom? What does that mean? Gmail makes sense to me. Yahoo! mail also makes sense to me. Language like this makes it sound like the current solutions we have are broken and we use them because there are no other alternative.
What doesn’t make sense is why I’d use a social networking site as my email client.
Will it allow me to do all of the above (POP/IMAP, search, label, filter, link with other accounts)?
There are still people online that don’t use Facebook. What’s their incentive to hop on? Because a portion of their other peers do?
What about the businesses that block it from use at work?
With the new UI folling out (since just three months), who’s to say that the current email system they are developing will stay exactly as it is introduced?
Bottom-line: what’s the incentive for me (as an end-user) – not Facebook as a company – to use their messaging system over what I already have?
John Saddington says
and that is the kicker for me… still so many people don’t use facebook… but do you think the culture (and technology) will shift where people GOTO FB for email explicitly?
Tom says
Personally, I just don’t see it – I can’t see people going to Facebook for email explicitly.
If we wanted it to be email that bad, wouldn’t we use the built-in messaging a lot more? I can’t see culture swapping over to it because a significant portion of us aren’t particular fond of the foundation to begin with. I don’t view Facebook as a professional utility. I see it as a way to connect with friends and, if you have a business or service, a way to reach a niche that you may not otherwise reach via some other capacity. But I just don’t see us as a culture looking to Facebook of all places to provide us with professional services.
Technologically speaking? :shrugs: Again, not really. Just because the technology is there and can support it doesn’t mean that there’s need for a shift. Case in point: Google works great as a search engine for me. Bing is search, too. It even has some bells and whistles Google doesn’t, but I don’t use it. It’s not simply because I’m comfortable with Google, it’s because it works for me. It helps me get my stuff done. Unless the technology Facebook introduces can help me to do email better than my current platform does, it doesn’t matter how high-end it is.
Of course, I am saying all of this purely based on speculation and I’ll admit that.
youngdesign says
The fact that 10 people sign-up to Facebook every SECOND cannot be denied.
Clearly something is making people ‘hop on’.
Alex Morrison says
Working with a college ministry, we find that Facebook is the best means for communication and traffic generation. The demographic checks their facebook sometimes 10 times a day versus a possible 2-3 times with their email.
John Saddington says
but you’d never fully wholesale replace, right?
Alex Morrison says
For staff-staff-communication? Probably not.
To the end user? Quite possible. We only do email campaigns 2-3 times a year.
Paul Steinbrueck says
It’s hard to say anything definitely without seeing the features included and its integration with the rest of Facebook, but it makes a lot of sense to me that Facebook would try to leverage it’s position as the dominant social media platform and try to parlay that into becoming a dominant player in the email field.
If somebody is already using FB all the time and wants a web-based email account, it would make a lot more sense to use an integrated FB email tool than to have a completely separate account somewhere else.
I don’t really see this making viable a communications strategy based entirely on FB, though.
John Saddington says
neither do i paul. i think it’s a nice “thought” but wide adoption seems unlikely.
Brian N. says
Didn’t Google already try to re-make e-mail with Wave?
For any significant amount of users to switch their most frequently used internet function (e-mail) from one source to another, the UI will have to be flawless and accessible AND it will need to somehow need to make a smooth transition from their old e-mail.
From a church’s perspective, the challenge, as always will be convincing the congregation the switch will be worth it.
I can’t see Facebook developing anything that attractive.
John Saddington says
good point s here. i digg your style.
Kevin Rossen says
I’ve wodered why facebook hasn’t capitalized on its own popularity and open up usernames to email. I don’t see it as a Gmail killer, but it really could be a hotmail or aol killer for sure.
Alex Morrison says
Wait, AOL is still alive?!
John Saddington says
yes. i still use it alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the time.
Alex Morrison says
Word. I’ll use FBmail if it has a catchy “You’ve got Facemail” jingle.
John Saddington says
you win. “facemail” is epic.
youngdesign says
I don’t know if they need email.
As a common user, I can already:
– chat to someone directly
– leave a message for someone (public or private)
– show people photos and video
– share my links
As a company, I can already:
– announce upcoming news (public/private)
– organize events
– show people photos and video
– share links/websites
– and limitless more with coding/applications
What is left? How else can we communicate with someone? I don’t use email to communicate with anyone other than business associates anymore. I don’t NEED a Facebook email address.
Regarding Facebook as a primary Communications Platform:
I can view as much information on our Facebook Page (as an external non-facebook user) than our real website… signed-up, I could do even more.
We debated whether our 2010 website redesign would be exclusive to Facebook, but at this point fell back onto it being a supporting role. However it will be a HUGE supporting role as we have more ‘Fans’ on Facebook than we do congregants within our campuses…
A company could live solely on Facebook right now, no problems. It just isn’t ‘normal’ yet.
NickShoe says
I’ve worked with a few “all-encompassing” platforms in the past. It seems that while they mostly start out with great intentions, they often get left by the wayside as either the developer or the user moves on to bigger, newer, shinier things.
I have a good friend that started one such enterprise. While it was successful at first, and did more than most of the other products of it’s kind out there, it became the step-child that you have to send to reform school rather quickly. There were a couple reasons for this, but both centered around cost. Cost of operation and cost of use. And, yes- you guessed it, you couldn’t have one change without the other being affected.
Often times existing and potential clients would be asking why they couldn’t just have the basic package for free. That’s all fine, but there’s a problem with free. I’m reminded of Ben Arment’s article “The Trouble With Free” in the most recent issue of Collide. He writes about Free, stating, “While we enthusiastically embrace the idea of free, we treat it with very little respect. Free carries with it an inherent perception of no value”.
While the idea of a strategic communication platform is exciting, the problem would be the sell to the local church and the potential developer. Get this great platform that can literally do everything you need for connecting and communicating with your people, and we may be there when you need us to provide support- if we’re not working to keep the lights on elsewhere. Or, develop this amazing thing, but don’t expect to make a dime.
Free has been successful in some areas, albeit ones that should be praised. The YouVersion Holy Bible App is a great example of $free.99 that works. Unfortunately this is out of reach for the majority of churches. This is proved further by the lack of churches jumping into the mobile app devo area.
This is where I’m excited about the possibilities with the 8bit Network. The pooling of resources has the ability, not potential, but ability to be The Church to the church.
Rock on Church. Rock on.
Brad Davis Seal says
For my church, Facebook could good for communicating with females. Our fan page (http://facebook.com/firsthattiesburg) has 834 fans, 2/3 are female.
However, if I send out an update to all the fans, I get a weak response. People seem to ignore updates because of the high rate of app, group & event spam. This is a guess since Facebook has poor analytics.
Our church email list uses MailChimp and has about the same number of subscribers as our Facebook fan page. MailChip tells me that 48% of people opened the last email (this was 2% higher than average) but also exactly who opened the email and which links were clicked. Facebook lacks a way to test the effectiveness of your communication.
Brett Barner says
Yeah, I don’t see Facebook Messaging taking off like that. They desperately need to fix their messaging anyway (Always ‘reply all’?)
They also struggle with their often buggy Chat. I can’t see them providing a service that plenty of other competition offers that could be that much better.
Plus we all know how much Facebook users hate change. I doubt they’ll want to change their email address and all the hassles that go with it.
Unless there’s some type of FarmVille integration….hmmm. 🙂
Joel says
I can’t see Facebook being a one stop shop for communication for churches. Facebook adoption is no where near email adoption. Unless this communication system doesn’t require a Facebook account, I don’t see it happening.
Kyle Reed says
It seems to unreliable. Are people going to get updates on when they have gotten a new email from facebook? seems to defeat the purpose. I do not see people checking their facebook messages as much as they check their email. Therefore, I am not interested nor do I think it will kill gmail.
Aaron Melton says
As a few people have alluded already, “just makes sense” depends on the demographic you’re trying to reach. I seriously doubt it will even come close to taking “market share” away from Gmail — but let’s face it. ANYTHING Facebook does to improve its messaging service will only make it better (because it is anything BUT good right now).
Alternatively, it appears the Empire is about to strike back: http://bit.ly/bwieLq
And am I the only one left wondering that if Facebook starts an email service, are you still required to have an outside email to join-up? 😛
PhillipGibb says
makes life easy if you have a gizzilion friends. And if you are targeting groups of people. Essentially you would have access to a million email addresses that you could send unsolicited email to. used strategically and fairly that can be very good, but spam could could go to a whole new level with this.
Jenn Hudson says
Pastor/Dad and I just had a conversation about this last week. most of his member communication is through facebook (it IS the new white pages) — and he is still using his original AOL account.
We are looking for the Facebook takeover someday, just like we are a one world government. -ha-. It’s probably inevitable.
I am a traditionalist and will keep my primary gmail & yahoo pop, thank you, and NOT at all a fan of emailing through facebook right now.
But if Facebook, gave me a POP address and all my google filtering preferences and if “everyone else were doing it” – I would probably be likely to click the kill switch on my gmail.
Wayne Cordova says
Most people I know still use whatever email address that was given to them from their ISP.
When I start telling some people about the free email addresses they can get through GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. They act like it’s too complicated. (sure “we” know it’s not, but still.)
I don’t think most of the general public would use Facebook as an email source. If anything it’ll be used for the same purpose the Facebook inbox is already used for.
Didn’t MySpace already try this?