Facebook’s Gmail Killer, Project Titan, Is Coming On Monday

http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/facebook-gmail-titan/

by obilgic • 16 years ago

231 207 16 years ago

techcrunch.com

obilgic2• 16 years ago

I was thinking about this when they launched username system, without knowing rumors about that.

drgath2• 16 years ago

You and everyone else.

gsivil2• 16 years ago

it seems convenient within Facebook but I would not like using a @facebook.com email address for serious communication. Imagine applying for college with such an address.

samfoo2• 16 years ago

Is @gmail.com somehow more distinguished?

obilgic2• 16 years ago

If you use @facebook.com You basically share your profile(at least profile picture)

gsivil2• 16 years ago

I think so. It seems more neutral at least. I like facebook for whatever it is but not for professional use.

ArcticCelt• 16 years ago

To me yes.

In a professional image scale I would definitively rank facebook.com less professional than gmail.com but maybe slightly better than WorlOfWarcraft.com

sliverstorm• 16 years ago

@gmail.com is no @jdoe.net, but imho it's probably one of the most respectable free email domains.

chrisaycock• 16 years ago

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/email_address

davidedicillo2• 16 years ago

don't you think people would google you anyway? that's the first thing i do when i receive an email from someone i don't know or a possible client. well at least before i started using rapportive.

michaelhart4• 16 years ago

The interface'll have the be unbelievably amazing and innovative for this to even make a dent in people's minds. And as others have pointed out, Facebook.com is not associated with professionalism (unless you're a recruiter or tech blogger or something).

All in all, I think nobody will care at the end of the day.

davidedicillo2• 16 years ago

> The interface'll have the be unbelievably amazing and innovative for this to even make a dent in people's minds

I guarantee you that they are going to become the default address between people 16 and under. My brother is 16 and doesn't have an email address, but he does have a facebook account.

ericflo• 16 years ago

That's the scariest thing I've read so far today.

radicaldreamer• 16 years ago

He'll have an email address by the time he gets to college. There are still plenty of people who'd prefer to keep their personal and collegiate/professional lives separate.

usaar3332• 16 years ago

Especially amazing given that you need an email to sign up.

endlessvoid94• 16 years ago

You can get a facebook account without an email address?

jparise• 16 years ago

... where 16 and under would mean 13-16. Facebook accounts aren't technically available to minors (under 13 years old).

michaelhart4• 16 years ago

I doubt it. Most schools block Facebook, whereas most do not block Gmail (many rely on Gmail themselves). Using a Facebook email is just asking for accessibility problems.

csomar• 16 years ago

You need an email address to sign up for Facebook and every time he signs up we write it down. So, he does have one.

RuadhanMc• 16 years ago

Is that even possible? Can you sign up to Facebook without having an email address?

jlmendezbonini• 16 years ago

Initially you needed a .edu email to register. Then they opened facebook to everyone (any email). Now you don't you need an email address to register? Or did your brother used a throw-away email (gmail?) account?

marcusbooster• 16 years ago

Despite my occasional pleas, it's already the messaging service of choice between my friends and friends-of-friends. They say it's easier to add people to a discussion, and it's hard to fight the momentum.

nopassrecover• 16 years ago

Except last I checked you couldn't include people in existing threads.

ajg1977• 16 years ago

I will be really interested to see this, because as it stands Facebook's messaging interface is barely any better than 2001's Hotmail (you do get a pretty picture with address autocomplete though).

Going from where they are now to anywhere close to being a 'Gmail killer' is a humongous step.

tafle4• 16 years ago

A humongous step that Techcrunch is more than happy to make.

sp4rki4• 16 years ago

Techcrunch? What are you talking about?

ssclafani• 16 years ago

I heard that Zuckerberg locked Paul Buchheit in a closet and told him he couldn't come out until he cloned Gmail.

_b8r03• 16 years ago

It's being put into 'The Social Network 2: Return of the Lawsuits' as I write.

jakerocheleau• 16 years ago

I'd believe it

billstr• 16 years ago

maybe they'll let him out on Nov15th then: http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/facebook-gmail-titan/

nebula• 16 years ago

Is that why Paul ran off to YC, as soon as it's done?

mortenjorck• 16 years ago

Actually, I think the starkness of Facebook's messaging UI is its greatest strength. If they can somehow make real email as simple as that, abstracting away all the decades-old cruft of email that Gmail only partially abstracts away, it will be quite a formidable entry.

Add a script that allows non-technical users to log into their Gmail account and set up a redirect... and things could get very interesting.

darklajid• 16 years ago

I usually try to stop myself being overly protective of privacy. But - I already thought about leaving GMail several times to make sure that I don't rely on a big company that knows a lot about me.

Now Facebook, that would be an alternative. Uhm - wait a minute!

I do think they're going to pull this off though. Lots of people I know are still (happily) using the "older" services around, local free email providers, hotmail, whatever. A sexy webmail client, promoted by the site they use heavily? Sounds like a dealbreaker. Lots of non-technical people don't know Google as something other than a field to type searches into (or even rely on the browser search fields). Facebook could "educate" those to switch quite easily, I guess, given a good marketing strategy and some neat "integrate your mails with your status updates" features.

Ugh..

tafle4• 16 years ago

I think an interesting case here that will be affected here is how social circles were dealing that one stubborn Facebook holdout.

Before, there were two choices. Either move communication to email, or leave them out of the loop. Now the choice is easy, and it will all happen within Facebook.

asknemo• 16 years ago

Even if the thing turns out to be unbelievably amazing, I doubt companies would like people to be constantly logged in to facebook "for mail" during work. For many offices, a browser tab on facebook could just imply chit-chat with friends, farmville, and many other unproductive pursuits. How could it be a "Gmail Killer" with such a born defect?

enqk• 16 years ago

aren't iphones the gateway from work to facebook?

trotsky• 16 years ago

If facebook can really deliver a rock solid web mail client, I think they will really be a company to watch in the rest of 1996 and 1997. If they play their cards right they may get snapped up by an industry powerhouse like yahoo or excite@home for eight figures.

paraschopra• 16 years ago

You have lots of upvotes, so what you are saying must be interesting. But I can't seem to get it! Can anyone explain what's this about?

dotBen2• 16 years ago

back in that era all of the successful players - you know, the REALLY successful players like Yahoo, Microsoft and Excite (!) had web-mail clients that were basically startups they acquired.

It was only Google that really built a killer web-mail client from scratch in-house.

varjag• 16 years ago

Business 2.0 speak, perhaps with a hint that web email at this point is OLD NEWS?

look_lookatme2• 16 years ago

Trotsky has lots of upvotes because he or she managed rev the Hacker News Facebook Hate Machine with a bit of humor.

gojomo2• 16 years ago

If @facebook.com email addresses have a stronger link to real, non-spammy, non-mass-produced identities than other domains, they could become preferred at many other sites -- a broader version of Facebook Connect.

michaelhart4• 16 years ago

Wrong -- your FB email address will likely have the same prefix as your vanity URL. Guess that that means? Spam bots know your email address already.

TomasSedovic• 16 years ago

I think he means it the other way: e-mail addresses ending with facebook.com could signal "this is a genuine person, not a spammer".

gojomo2• 16 years ago

And so Facebook offers a switch: "only accept mail from friends and sites I've liked".

If you've got a popular walled garden, making the jungle outside even scarier, and thus forcing a stronger commitment to the tended 'inside', can be good business.

dstein• 16 years ago

But Gmail has a good spam filter. So, you could use Gmail's POP features to connect to and download your Facebook emails.

dotBen2• 16 years ago

Although this is already the case with Google Profiles - the url is the same as your gmail account name unless you opt out/change it (most people don't)... yet google handles the spam well.

shrikant2• 16 years ago

Tangent to your point: I suppose @facebook.com will be reserved for employees/contractors only. The Facebook users will probably get either @fbmail.com or @fmail.com.

If I were FB, I'd go with the latter, just so that I can say, "Fmail - it's one better than Gmail!"

Of course, that opens up a whole raft of other issues, not the least of which is F being right next to G (on my US QWERTY keyboard), so folks keying in an address might typo and send emails to the wrong service and/or person.

look_lookatme2• 16 years ago

Not sure why you think that, Facebook has always stressed one, real identity. If your facebook URL is facebook.com/john.smith, why should your email not be john.smith@facebook.com? Is there a compelling reason? What would be the difference if john.smith became an employee of facebook?

AgentConundrum• 16 years ago

If I were FB, I'd go with the latter, just so that I can say, "Fmail - it's one better than Gmail!"

Your view is exactly opposite from mine. I viewed it as higher is better (where A is 1 - or 0 if you're binarily inclined). You have regular email, and Google's GMail is two higher.

Facebook using FMail, to me, feels a bit like saying "it's better than plain Jane email, but still not quite as good as GMail."

ErrantX2• 16 years ago

Setting up fake Facebook accounts is trivial.

Sure, not as easy, perhaps, as some of the spammier email providers. But if the domain gets that much good karma it would be worth the effort...

swombat• 16 years ago

1) Facebook can build a simple API which, given an email, tells you the trust rating of that person. "To sign up to this service you need a Facebook trust rating of 10 or more" <- no spammers on the service.

2) Emails from facebook can include the trust rating too.

How to get the trust rating? That's exactly what social networks are: networks of trust. Pick some obvious trustworthy nodes to start, expand from there with diminishing trust as you get further away, increasing trust the more connections there are to someone who's trustworthy, and so on... there's probably a zillion great algorithms to calculate this.

Solving the problem of trust would basically solve the problem of identity, since identity (in real life as well as online) is a product of a trust network.

philfreo• 16 years ago

Actually - it's not. To interact with other users in a significant way they have CAPTCHAS to fill out - unless you confirm your account via a mobile phone SMS (which can only be used 1-to-1).

RtodaAV• 16 years ago

I don't have a facebook account but idk about this. Will users get another username for their email address or use their vanity usernames? The under 18 crowd will use it because like another poster brought up, my brother also doesn't have a email address. He tried using mine.

sp4rki4• 16 years ago

I've always thought that Facebook could make a real difference by becoming a central hub to control your "persona" or identity so to speak. Facebook could integrate with every other service and app under the sun, and users would not require to input information (any more then their Facebook uri) to register for anything.

Instead they're trying to undercut Google by keeping them out of the 'shared data' agreement and now they're going into... e-mail and messaging? I'd rather they work on improving Facebook Connect and give me a way to control my data (and usable privacy controls while we're at it). I sure as hell don't want my personal email (and even less any business or corporate email) going through Facebook. Hell I have a hard time accepting Gmail, though it's so convenient I compromise.

Lots of people say that Facebook won't go the way of MySpace. But you know what? Lots of people said the same thing about MySpace too. Everyday I see or hear more and more about people I know just not using their accounts anymore and in some cases actually deleting them; even I don't get much value from it either this days.

I think Facebook is losing direction and just trying to wow users with amazing features that no one really needs. They need to focusing on making what they have better, not adding features and avoiding integration with other services.

copper• 16 years ago

> Facebook could integrate with every other service and app under the sun, and users would not require to input information (any more then their Facebook uri) to register for anything.

Facebook has done exactly this, and there's been quite a bit of backlash, with some discussion on this site itself.

sp4rki4• 16 years ago

Facebook Connect has a long way from being the "identity manager" I speak of, and it's integration with applications as it is now leaves a lot to be desired. There has been backslash because 1) it's a mediocre implementation and 2) the lack of openness on behalf of Facebook and their methods are not in the best interest of either the users or the applications that could use this system.

Facebook could have become the central hub in which you can manage your identity (in an open way of course). Facebook could allow you to easily do anything on the web with fewer clicks by means of integration with other sevices. Instead they rather have you locked in to using their services and implementations and that is what I don't agree on. I wished it followed what I want, but whatever they do I wish it was adding value to the experience instead of just creating a more locked in ecosystem.

chopsueyar6• 16 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigy_%28online_service%29

Is MySpace dead? Prodigy is, so is kozmo.com, and broadcast.com.

My money is on Amazon. No other network has as many users associated with credit cards as Amazon, as well as written reviews by 'authorized' users.

psadauskas• 16 years ago

I've long wondered why Amazon doesn't have a authentication service, like Facebook and Twitter. Seems like it would be really useful for startups based on EC2.

metageek2• 16 years ago

>Lots of people say that Facebook won't go the way of MySpace. But you know what? Lots of people said the same thing about MySpace too.

The difference is that, when people gave up on MySpace, Facebook was there to move to. Not sure there's anything comparable now.

pshapiro• 16 years ago

Personally I really don't want my email visible to Facebook. What would they do with my information? Google already set the precedent for leveraging email data _somehow_. If so, Facebook will probably push the boundaries while carefully marketing it so that users accept something they would not have just previously. I only have a problem with this because they're profiting from data that users would not have allowed them to sell to advertisers if they had known about the terms when signing up. So it's like a bait and switch and that makes me distrust them.

maheshs• 16 years ago

Google try to integrate social network with gmail (buzz) and failed. Now facebook is trying to integrate social network with mail and result would be fail IMHO.

Mail and "social networks" are different need.

revoltingx• 16 years ago

Social networking is lame.

DjDarkman• 16 years ago

Now Facebook will have no excuse not to allow exporting of friends email address... well they will probably think of something else.

I doubt they could kill GMail, if there is one thing Google is good at is, fast and efficient interfaces, it may not be pretty, but who cares, it's an email client.

_b8r03• 16 years ago

Does anyone have any decent info on which free mail service is the most popular? I know a fair amount of people use any mixture of hotmail, gmail and yahoo. Perhaps 'killing gmail' isn't as big as killing hotmail/live/badabingmail.

bhrgunatha• 16 years ago

I'd be very interested to see stats on this, but my money is on yahoo. Despite their decline in the US and Europe, they are massively dominant in Asia in search, shopping and mail.

pbiggar• 16 years ago

I remember seeing stats recently. Hotmail, then Yahoo, then Gmail. Gmail have something like 100million users, and hotmail has 250(?)million I think.

allbutlost• 16 years ago

Fairly recent [1] stats seem to point to:

  hotmail:  360m+ active accounts
  yahoo:    275m+ active accounts
  Gmail in 3rd, followed by AOL webmail [2}

Although yahoo! mail seems to have a more active user base as it's ahead on most site ranking systems [3].

Sources: [1] http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/metrics/email-statist... [2] http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/14/gmail-nudges-past-aol-email... [3] http://www.hitwise.com/us/datacenter/main/dashboard-10133.ht...

treblig• 16 years ago

This is wild. When Facebook flips the switch, they'll instantly become the largest email service.

d_r• 16 years ago

Aside from the merits of this story, has anything that was branded "killer" by the media actually ended up being even moderately successful?

(The various iPhone killers, Facebook killers, Google killers, and so on come to mind...)

khafra• 16 years ago

Presumably TechCrunch feels some affection for Google, and has decided to give facemail the tech-journalism kiss of death.

gnufs• 16 years ago

Android

zecg• 16 years ago

Another address people will just forward to their gmail. The article claims facebook has "the most popular photos product"... it may be true, but their "photos product" is shit.

Estragon2• 16 years ago

Are there any for-pay gmail-like mail services out there offered by companies who aren't trying to make money by selling their users to their advertisers?

I use gnus at the moment, but it's starting to feel a bit long in the tooth. On the other hand, the thought of having all my email in a marketer's database kind of squicks me.

smiler• 16 years ago

Google apps premier. No advertising

rkwz• 16 years ago

I think Facebook has much much bigger goals than silly gmail killing. It's trying to become the internet for all those who don't know the difference between a browser, web site and the internet. Offering email services is just a small step in that direction.

mistermann3• 16 years ago

I agree. One market I'd like to see them enter is online payments and micropayments, they have enough reach that they could probably pull it off.

steveklabnik2• 16 years ago

Facebook Credits don't count?

BBonifield• 16 years ago

You can already purchase Facebook credits for games and the like. It's just a matter of time before they transition that into something with a wider reach.

samuel• 16 years ago

So it's more like a hotmail killer. Gmail users tend to be "power" ones.

Gibbon• 16 years ago

Hotmail and Yahoo Mail are also more than twice as big as Gmail.

krschultz• 16 years ago

A lot of people compare Facebook to MySpace, but isn't AOL also a good comparison?

Remember all the companies that were AOL keywords. Now they have Facebook pages. AOL has a messenger, now Facebook does. It just strikes me as AOL for the 21st century.

gonzo2• 16 years ago

I actually got to pose the question (live and in-person), "Isn't Facebook the new AOL?" to Steve Case last week.

BrandonM• 16 years ago

> A lot of people compare Facebook to MySpace, but isn't AOL also a good comparison?

"Facebook is the new AOL" is about as close as Hacker News gets to a meme.

jbrennan• 16 years ago

I wonder, then, if they'll ever enter into web search. It would make sense, given the seeming herd migration of engineers from Google (though I don't know how many were from Search).

iantimothy• 16 years ago

So the interesting question to me is, after learning about the history of AOL, why would Facebook want to pursue what on surface seems like a similar strategy.

What's different this time with Facebook? And are the threats to its growth, success and longevity in principle the same as AOL's.

shuaib• 16 years ago

O no, please! Why do they all have to turn into I-completely-want-to-own-your-Internet-life giants? Isn't doing one thing good enough, enough? Who needs yet another email service provider?

JonnieCache• 16 years ago

I see this as a good thing. As others have mentioned here, FB messaging is more popular than email for a lot of people. This means I'll be able to communicate effectively with my friends who check their FB an order of magnitude more than their email (almost all of them,) using SMTP in any way that I choose rather than having to log into FB with all its attendant awfulness.

How does this news represent anything other than FB rewriting its inbox/messaging tool to operate over SMTP/IMAP? And how can that be anything but good? Okay we all wish they'd used the Wave Federation Protocol, but we can't have everything we want.

yread• 16 years ago

Well for me Gmail's killer is the build 1060 of Opera 11

Supermighty• 16 years ago

The killer aspect of any facebook email project is that your friends are automatically white listed and in your address book.

TallGuyShort2• 16 years ago

Maybe I'm biased by having seen The Social Network, but does anyone else get the feeling that Facebook is motivated by hurting other people? I mean, when Google was starting to get big, it seemed like they were driven by their own creativity, by their drive to be awesome. But Facebook just always exudes this attitude of jealousy.

edit: Any of the downvoters care to explain? It's an honest question about two different companies - if you disagree, I'd like to hear what you think.

cmer• 16 years ago

It's just business. They'll do what it takes to get new users and to keep them. The reason they will be giving away @facebook.com email addresses is the same reason why my mother in law won't get off AOL. She doesn't want to lose her email address.

TallGuyShort2• 16 years ago

Yeah - I get that, but unless I've just been spared from the darker side of business, I've never worked for a company that would have called something "The X Killer" internally. People are aware of their competitors and what they need to do to beat them, but it seems like an unusual focus to focus on "killing" someone else product than coming up with something customers want even more.

gonzo2• 16 years ago

Facebook is the new AOL

Tyrannosaurs3• 16 years ago

Zuckerberg is absolutely the man I want to trust with my e-mail.

notyourwork• 16 years ago

Dare this not be sarcasm?

Tyrannosaurs3• 16 years ago

Sarcasm? The word isn't even in my dictionary.

Actually looking at it the whole section from marmalade to turbot appears to be missing.

(With thanks to Douglas Adams for the joke).

jobu• 16 years ago

Obvious sarcasm, and I agree. Facebook has become synonymous with insecurity, poor privacy, and scams. Why anyone would trust them with personal info is beyond me.

It's not that I completely trust google either, but they do seem to have a better track record of having their users interests in mind.

sasidharm2• 16 years ago

If you already trust Google with your email, then it cant be that bad.

sorbus2• 16 years ago

Google doesn't have a tendency to change their privacy policy and intentionally release private information, while Facebook does.

[EDIT: Changed "the" to "their," and "rules" to "policy," as this makes my sentence both look better and more accurate.]

Tyrannosaurs3• 16 years ago

I feel increasingly uncomfortable using GMail but I still think Google is a step up from Facebook.

joezydeco2• 16 years ago

I trust I can read my gMail over SSL without someone firesheeping me. Can I do that with Facebook right now?

resdirector• 16 years ago

"Killer"?

Hard to make an email killer. Hotmail, for instance, is still incredibly popular, and will continue to be.

jscore• 16 years ago

I closed my account few months ago, does this mean I will miss the revolution?

u48998• 16 years ago

Well, didn't they buy Drop.io? So obviously they're going after our emails. The interesting thing would be to see if they require people to adopt new email addresses or not

jhrobert• 16 years ago

If Twitter is smart they will provide the smart ultra cheap fast answer: mailto:username@twitter.com with automatic forwarding to your actual email (that they know of already).

No brainer.

I hope that facebook users will use their twitter name to setup their facebook email adress, ie: use it as a very public address.

@jhr

dinedal• 16 years ago

Something tells me that now I am going to get an email in my Gmail for every email that I get in my facemail telling me I have a new facemail.

_cbsz• 16 years ago

This should actually mean I don't need to visit facebook.com anymore if there is indeed POP3 or IMAP access, because (presumably) they will send full messages to Titan rather than the current "you have a new message NOW CLICK ME", and POP3 access to Titan means that I can get Facebook messaging through GMail.

The catch is probably going to be a lack of SMTP...

MortenK• 16 years ago

Wow, can't wait to see all my personal contact info publicly available after writing a merry christmas mail to auntlisa@facebook.com

zacharypinter• 16 years ago

Wasn't facebook's justification for not letting you export your friends' email adresses because they weren't an email application? Now that Facebook does email, will they allow an email export?

ary• 16 years ago

The sad thing is that facebook itself is already somewhat of a "Gmail killer." I have a ton of people that will only contact me through facebook. When I ask why they don't use email they usually don't have an answer. The ones that do mumble something about convenience.

owkaye• 16 years ago

I have NO ONE who prefers facebook to email. Then again I'm not a very social person online. I use the Internet primarily for research (self-education, it's like a huge free library on my desk) ... and for business, and business users certainly do not rely on facebook for online communication. I doubt they ever will.

smackfu2• 16 years ago

The answer is usually "because I never check my email".

cyanbane• 16 years ago

How long till we see cellphones (not the purported FB phone) utilize just one source for your contacts? I just got a WP7 phone and had to merge all my contacts in from multiple sources, if instead MS just piggybacked off FB only, it would make things far easier for the end user. Also FB could claim "portability" to some degree (even if just with their partner MS)

randall• 16 years ago

Isn't this the definition of feature creep?

Everything devolves till eventually it can check email. [someone more intelligent than me will find the source of that quote... I'm having a tough morning.]

tlrobinson• 16 years ago

I wonder if this has to do with the recent back-and-forth antics between Facebook and Google. It would make sense that Facebook wants a way for people to get their contacts out of Gmail...

didip• 16 years ago

Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

-- Jamie Zawinski

savrajsingh• 16 years ago

called it: http://twitter.com/#!/savraj/status/2138507508 :)

fjabre• 16 years ago

If Apple announces a new product, the world looks on with curiosity and awe.

If Facebook announces a new product, the world looks on with scorn and distrust.

topek• 16 years ago

Does anyone else think, that this was the main reason behind the "GMail blocks import" story (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1877845)?

JarekS• 16 years ago

Don't you guys think that it makes much more sense for Facebook to allow their users to hook up their email accounts (GMail, Hotmail etc.) via IMAP/POP and just be much better email interface with some extras?

Facebook could give priority sorting (based on your social graph), instant identification (kind of Rapportive features), and really easy to use and powerful address book (your social graph).

Facebook’s Gmail Killer, Project Titan, Is Coming On Monday

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