Facebook Messages Launched, Facebook.com Emails For All Users
Update: Facebook Messages in this form is not available anymore.
In a blog posting that just went live, Facebook's Joel Seligstein announced Facebook Messages, a new service for users to stay in contact with each other.
Information are scarce and there is not one screenshot of the interface. Still, here are the top features of Facebook Messages that we could gather from the article:
Facebook Messages Features
- Every Facebook user can get an @facebook.com email address if they want to.
- Facebook Messages is not like email in the traditional sense. It does not have subject lines, recipient email addresses. Users can concentrate on the message and not the technical details. It has been modeled more after chat (where you simply select a user and send the message than standard email)
- Messages is built around friends, and there will be a history of conversations available for each friend regardless of the way messages have been sent (which can be chat, email or SMS) Everything discussed with a friend is shown, from the very beginning to the current day.
- Facebook Messages uses a concept of the social inbox. This divides messages into Facebook friend emails and other emails. Conversations can be moved by the user to the other inbox so that future conversations show up there. There is even an option to bounce all email messages except those from friends. Goodbye spam.
- Facebook Messages and email addresses will be launched gradually over the coming months. Users receive invitations and once they do, they can invite friends to use messages as well.
Facebook has created a tour of messages which is currently showing an error. It is likely that the tour will be available later today.
Update: Messages Tour is now accessible. You can request an invite to Facebook Messages on the page to be use the service earlier.
All your messages together
Get Facebook messages, chats and texts all in the same place.
- Include email by activating your optional Facebook email address.
- Control who can send you messages through your privacy settings.
Full conversation history
See everything you've ever discussed with each friend as a single conversation.
- No need for subject lines or other formalities
- Easily leave large conversations that no longer interest you
The messages you want
Focus on messages from your friends.
- Messages from unknown senders and bulk email go into the Other folder
- Spam is hidden from view automatically
Facebook Messages FAQ
How do I upgrade to the new Messages?
- We’re rolling out the new Messages to everyone gradually, so you should see steps to upgrade soon. If you want to access the new Messages sooner, visit the Learn more page to request an invitation (invitations will be sent pending availability).
- How do I invite friends to upgrade to the new Messages?
Click "Invite Friends" at the top of your Messages view. The number of remaining invitations you can send will appear in parenthesis next to this link. Note that upgrades may not take effect immediately. - What’s changing with the new Messages?
Messages has always been the place for private exchanges on Facebook, and this won’t change. With the new Messages, now you have easy access to all your private conversations with your friends in one place.The new Messages interface not only displays the Facebook messages you exchange with friends, but it also interweaves your chats, texts and emails (should you choose to create an @facebook.com address). It’s a central place to control all of your private communication, both on and off Facebook.Now when you view a conversation, you’re actually looking at a complete history of all the communication you’ve shared with that person on Facebook — it’s like having an ongoing record of your friendship.
We’ve also added a few key features:
Faster interaction: If you want, you can send messages just by hitting your Enter key, so the new Messages is as fast (and as informal) as an in-person conversation.
Integrated communication: No matter what you’re using to communicate (Facebook, mobile or email), your conversation streams quickly and seamlessly into one place.
Smart filtering: You’ll always see what’s important to you first – messages from the people you’re close to take precedence over mailing lists.
Revamped search: Search for either the person you were talking with or what you were talking about to quickly find your message and all the related context.
Adding people to group conversations: Loop new people into the conversation, giving them full access to everything that’s been said so far.
Forwarding: Pass individual messages along to other friends.
Unsubscribing, or removing yourself from a conversation: Leave a group conversation when you no longer wish to receive new messages.
Sending attachments: In addition to sending links, photos and videos, you can now attach external files to your messages. - How are messages organized?
Messages are grouped into one ongoing conversation with each friend or group of friends, not by date or subject line. Thanks to smart filtering, you’ll always see messages from your friends, and friends of friends, first. - Why would I want to set up a Facebook email address? How does email work with messages?
There are many benefits to claiming your Facebook email address:
It’s free and easy to set up.
Having your email integrated with your messages, chats and texts makes it easier to check them all at once. And if you’re looking for a message later, you don’t have to worry about how it was sent since all your different types of messages are in one place.
Your Facebook messages are compatible with traditional email systems (e.g., Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail). When people send you emails from these external systems, they’re delivered directly to your Facebook Messages. And when you send messages to external email addresses, they’re formatted to look like your messages on Facebook, including your name and profile picture along with your message.
Owning your @facebook.com address makes it easier for friends and family who are not on Facebook yet to connect with you.
Your other email addresses may change over time, but your Facebook email never does. - Does the new Messages give me more control over which messages I see?
Unlike traditional messaging systems, where you have no control over who can message you once someone has your contact information, Facebook Messages lets you decide how you connect with friends and the people around you. Some key features that give you more control include:
Smart filtering: The tiered mailbox system allows you to focus on messages from the people you’re closest to, based on who you’re friends with on Facebook. Messages from other sources (such as spam and bulk email) automatically go to the "Other" folder.
Privacy: Your "Send me messages" privacy setting controls your Facebook messages. If you want, you can edit this setting so that certain messages are never delivered to you.
Selective delivery: The only messages you’ll receive are those that fall within the setting you choose. For example, if you have selected the "Friends of Friends" setting, then messages from email addresses that we can’t determine belong to a friend or a friend of a friend won’t be delivered to you. Instead, those senders will receive an automatic bounce-back reply.
Blocking: As always, you can block people, applications and websites on Facebook. When you block an application or a person, they will not be able to send you messages or contact you in any way.
Optional email address: You can choose to set up to an @facebook.com address that is compatible with traditional email systems. To start including email, text messages and chat as part of your conversations within Facebook Messages, click the "Edit: Settings" links at the bottom of your main messages page.
Leaving a conversation: You can leave group conversations if you no longer wish to participate. - How will people be able to find my Facebook email address?
If you choose to set up your email address, by default your Facebook email address does not appear as part of your contact information on your profile. However you can easily adjust your messages privacy setting to share your email address with friends.Important note about your Facebook email address
Your Facebook email address is the same as your public username. So if your Facebook URL is facebook.com/publicusername, your email address would be [email protected].Since your Facebook username is publicly viewable — much like a custom license plate number — this means that anyone who can see your public username (for example in a search) will be able to figure out your Facebook email address. However, you always have control over who can send you messages.
I must admit I don’t mind the reminder.
I use that as a trigger for an annual review.
The week of their birthday I scan their contact details, LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter to make sure I have all of their public contact information up to date.
That and also send them a quick message.
Pro Tip – I also have a script that on a daily basis will choose a contact at random for review.
Ross
You da man, Martin! Do you know how many people on Reddit shot me links and it wasn’t until your article here that I ever saw a page like “Contacts only?” Google really doesn’t want you to find this info! Lol!
They didn’t hide it… if you’ve only accessed the calender through Gmail from it’s tiny reminder notice interface, then you wouldn’t know how much more you can do with it. If you click the 9 boxes icon to access Google services, you can go to the full Calendar at any time and edit, add, change stuff at whim. Changes I make to the full calender get updated to my Android’s calender and vice versa with the only difference is having a full keyboard to type when I’m on my desktop/laptop is better than Swyping or poking contact and event information into the tiny calender APP.
Every comment has a point and absolutely right, Google tries really hard to hide their settings, it was last year were I stopped using Google services altogether but two gmail and photos. There was one point in time were I was going to change every account that was using gmail address, results it would’ve been more than just a headache and stuck with it.
Thanks for the Preview Martin
I turned off FB on my android phone. When I turned it back on, all of the birthdates appeared along with holidays, etc. I do not like this feature as it does not allow me to notice the appointments that I place on my calendar. please tell me how to delete. When I go onto calendar on my android, it does not have settings, so unable to delete or change calender . I don’t want notifications to appear when the birthdays are approaching, but I don’t want them to be on the calendar 24/7. HELP
Google’s built-in calendar lets you turn off birthdays from your circles, but it does NOT let you turn off the import of Google+ birthdays into your contacts. So if you have a contact with an email address that matches a Google+ profile then their birthday is forced onto your Birthdays calendar.
Obviously this is annoying as heck, so I built a replacement Birthdays calendar without this problem:
https://better-cal.appspot.com
Hello, I am desperate for help please.
I often list items for sale via facebook market place. One of my items out of 80 items on sale, was getting a strange amount of view. I had listed it before for about a year and it only ever reached a few hundred fews or so. This time it had reached about 19,000 views in one week, which was fake and abnormal. i was getting horrible pm’s from people on it, really nasty mocking my costume and myself.
I had to take the time down, reported everything to facebook they did not thing!
I then took it down for 3 weeks and have just put it back up and same thing is happening again. if I click the 3 little dots by the message it says leave group, but what group, it doesn’t tell me nor is there a link. I am n a few local buy sell groups or community groups, but how do I know which one it is?
any help how to stop this would be appreciated as somenoe said they think i’m being tagged in a group, but what group i don’t know, i’ts not nice.
It has been a long time so I can’t say for sure but I think you can prevent people from tagging you and last I knew it asks you if someone has tagged you and then you can decline it.
If Facebook doesn’t help you then its clear that they don’t care about you and you should maybe think at the very least about moving your sales elsewhere.
These short articles don’t worth the spent time of reading. I am very disappointed with them.
This article is
Martin Brinkmann
Mar 6, 2015
Updated • Sep 29, 2018
Facebook, Tutorials
In short, it was a topic of its time and may not be useful in today’s world.
Subscribers should pay attention to the “article creation and update dates”.
@owl, I beg your pardon, however I didn’t comment here this comment but in one of Emre Çitak. I see posts of mine in some other articles too with some old dates. I hope someone will fix this issue soon.
What is this? A sales pitch for Facebook?
Facebook is an untrustworthy organization and it’s apps are junk.
Go out and do something real. Like meet your neighbors and have a BBQ
Why anyone would want to share details of their private life on like is bewildering.
Must be all those endorphins one receives when someone likes a post.
@yanta,
I really like your comment!
Am I the only one seeing the ghacks article’s comment section mix-ups? Recent articles with commenting dated from years ago, on subjects having nothing to do with the article. This has been occurring now for a couple of weeks as far as I can tell.
Well I know what the word “META” means now in Hebrew. And it sure enough looks like it’s going down! Facebook is doing all it can to take away free speech. I can’t post anything that has got to do with the bible.
I can’t wait until they pull out of Android and make Messenger iOS only too while they are at it. Why do they hate poor people?
https://www.sammyfans.com/2023/08/24/messenger-lite-for-android-to-shut-down-in-september/
It’s odd how the “largest known covert digital influence operation” may not have been seen by any actual users.
“The campaign, which lasted over a year, garnered few, if any, eyeballs from real social media users, based on Meta’s analysis.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/china-behind-largest-ever-digital-influence-operation-says-meta/
Chinese accounts… even the reality is harder than expected. By the way, comments are still broken. Is there any intention to fix them? :S
Imagine paying for Facebook. If I were forced to pay for social media at gunpoint I’d easily pick Twitter despite its flaws.
You know even if it’s full of landmines from across the spectrum there are way more people my age. Doesn’t really matter what politics they have, they’re all my sisters and even if someone is at the complete opposite of me politically I’d still feel closer to them over the 50 and 60 somethings.
Even if we have different opinions are are all screwed the same and have more in common than we’d like to admit.
If they didn’t make it prohibitively expensive, then I would 100% pay for ad-free facebook. I’ve been wanting this since forever, just give us the choice to not see the frickin’ ads.
Glad I never got into social media.
Interesting article, however the unresolved issues here with the comments is very discouraging for us the readers. I haven’t found any explanation for this kind of problems by any responsible of this site, so I think this problem will last for some undefined time. Anyway, I will start soon my first job as forestal engineer so it’s probably that I will have not too much time to comment as before. Please keep on the good job with some interesting articles and fix the comments as soon as possible! :]
It would be more helpful if Facebook could just remove their entire website.
“Considering that only a minority of users is willing to pay for an ad-free experience, Meta would have to keep the regular versions for the rest of users.”
Just like the Be-spied-on “business model”, Pay-or-be-spied-on is still illegal under GDPR (*), even if it’s something that is encountered more and more often those times from many companies on the internet that do not respect the privacy laws and think they can comply instead with an unofficial version of those that they have written themselves. Which in practice is true because those laws are hardly applied, every judge and regulatory agency in Europe that has something to do with privacy laws crumbling under the bribes of Facebook and the like, and not even trying to do that quietly (see noyb dot eu). But there has to be a limit on how long they can delay justice against them.
“it is likely reduced, but it is unclear, if it is disabled entirely for paying users.”
What would be funny is if users end paying *and* being spied on, which would not be surprising from Facebook. After all how would one know what Facebook does ? They are already spying while it is illegal to do so, how would paying them deter them more from breaching our rights ? And it’s not like they are not known for being pathological liars as a company, too.
(*) https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679&from=FR
” (42) […] Consent should not be regarded as freely given if the data subject has no genuine or free choice or is unable to refuse or withdraw consent without detriment.”
@Martin. In your first paragraph, ‘edge’, not ‘Edge’.
lmao, half of the captcha that shows up after submitting is hidden, so… I can’t submit. Classic.
Re: Sept 18, 2023 article, Ask Meta to delete or block your personal data from third-party sources for AI training
I tried the page a few days ago. I’m in the US and selected the option two. I input my personal info – the same used for my FB account – which I haven’t signed into for a year or more. I got the following response from Facebook, basically brushing me off:
“Hi,
Thank you for contacting us.
Based on the information provided, we were unable to process your request. To help us process your request, please provide examples or screenshots that show evidence of your personal information (for example, your name, address or phone number) in responses from Meta’s generative AI models. Once you provide this evidence, we would be happy to investigate further.
If you have any questions about how Meta uses information from our products and services, please see our Privacy Policy: https://www.facebook.com/privacy/policy
To learn more about generative AI, and our privacy work in this new space, you can review the information we have in Privacy Center: https://www.facebook.com/privacy/genai
Thanks,
Privacy Operations”
The page didn’t ask for any “information”. Maybe because I’m in the US, Facebook won’t do anything? Maybe the page coding is messed up? Maybe this only works if you provide proof of AI use of your PII? Maybe it’s all just sound and fury signifying nothing?
Today I tried again, but the captcha challenge is formatted so you can’t see all the photos and can’t scroll or enlarge the pop-up.
Not even half-baked, I’d say..
I must say, this development from Meta is intriguing! The idea of ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram is a breath of fresh air, especially for users like me who have been increasingly bothered by the overwhelming ads on these platforms.
Living in the EU, I appreciate the GDPR regulations and the push for more privacy-focused options. However, I’ll be curious to see how Meta plans to monetize these ad-free versions. Will they be subscription-based? If so, what will the pricing model look like? Will there be additional features or benefits for subscribers?
While the prospect of a less cluttered and more private social media experience is enticing, it’s important that Meta maintains a balance between user privacy and revenue generation. Striking that balance will be key to the success of these ad-free versions.
I hope Meta also considers extending this option to users outside the EU in the future. It would be great to see such privacy-centric alternatives available globally.
Additionally, I recently came across an interesting tool called “Instagram Story Anonymous” at storysnooper.com, which allows users to view Instagram Stories anonymously. It’s another example of how privacy-conscious individuals are seeking alternatives to maintain their online privacy. It will be interesting to see if Meta’s ad-free versions address similar concerns.
Overall, I’m cautiously optimistic about this development and will be keeping a close eye on how it unfolds. What are your thoughts on this, fellow readers?