Guest post by Gwen Davis of Hosting Observer.
While most companies are able to obtain free domains from hosting companies, Facebook recently spent a significant amount of money to acquire the new domain name, fb.com.
Facebook is now the administrative and technical contact for this domain. This domain currently points to Facebook but there is a growing speculation that fb.com may serve as an option for its new webmail project Titan.
Facebook’s new offering Titan, a modern messaging service is expected to give Gmail and Yahoo a run for their money. Amidst all the hype CEO Mark Zuckerberg stresses that Titan is not out to replace Gmail, but plans to revolutionize online communication into a semantic web. In fact, Titan will merely combine SMS, chat, Facebook IM and email into one thread, regardless of how the conversation started.
This Social Inbox, will employ a tiered system that prioritizes messages based on the frequency of interaction and uses a Policy Engine that provides a smart way with regards to what channel or mode of communication is used.
Contrary to popular forecasts, Facebook remained true to its word in following an open route by offering POP/IMAP support. Hence, users will be able to log into and access the account from platforms other than Facebook.
Facebook’s history however of taking ideas and remarketing them as demonstrated by vanity domain names a previously MySpace trademark, which Facebook adopted as a strategy to compete and surpass MySpace’s subscribership should be proof enough of an underlying risk to other email hosting companies.
Facebook email addresses offered for users albeit optionally since the system is currently under an RSVP-only beta release which pretty much gives you a Gmail Invite déjà vu, is fully operative missing only the long-established subject line portion while adding SMS message functionality (hitting the enter button to send messages) this holds great potential in a face-off with said rivals provided it secures a huge uptake.
Facebook may very well be the new heir to Google’s evil throne but the bad blood apparently isn’t a fresh topic. Here is a trackback on the articles of war:
- Facebook gets creative by providing a workaround.
- Gmail shuts down Contacts API from Facebook, reciprocal list issues.
- Google’s Orkut Sakoku contingency.
- As Google struggles to retain its talent by offering 10% salary increases, Facebook continues to improve and offers a significant threat to the company. Google is even searching for ways to combat Facebook’s networking advantage.
While Zuckerberg continues to emphasize, “This is not an e-mail killer. It’s a messaging system that has e-mail as one part of it. I don’t expect people to wake up tomorrow and say, ‘I’m going to shut down my Yahoo account or my Gmail account.’” experts note the irony that Google is now facing the same threat that they imposed upon Apple when Android was introduced.
Even Zuckerberg’s statement holds an eerie parallelism to Steve Job’s pep talk, “We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake, they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.”
Definitely, the introduction of this new messaging system is a stark validation of the blurring lines in niche markets.
