Facebook Pulls the Plug on Its Email Service
Did you ever use your @facebook.com email address? Me neither! And it seems that many other Facebook users did not take advantage of the email services.
The simple truth of the matter is that Facebook’s email service failed to draw the public’s attention. Consequently, Facebook decided to pull the plug on the three-year-old email service.
Back in November 2010, social networking giant Facebook decided to give all its users a new email address, a new @facebook.com email address to be more precise. You know, all the Facebook users who registered with an existing email account, they were all force-fed an additional @facebook.com email account. While I was reserved about this move, others praised it and even went as far as to call Facebook’s email service a “Gmail killer.” Turns out they were wrong – the only thing that died was Facebook’s email service, not Gmail.
Turns out that people did not need another email account and did not want an unsolicited @facebook.com email account. The vast majority of Facebook users, including myself, did not use the email service. Facebook’s popularity and user base grew and grew, that is true. But all the users who joined Facebook, all the people who used Facebook to stay in touch with others, well, they couldn’t care less about Facebook’s email service.
Because very few people used their @facebook.com email account, Facebook decided to shut it down. All emails sent to @facebook.com addresses are now forwarded to the email address set by the user as the primary email address. So if you signed up with EXAMPLE@gmail.com, all emails sent to your @facebook.com will be redirected to EXAMPLE@gmail.com.
The change presented above will happen in early March.
In related news, Facebook recently announced that it entered into an agreement to purchase WhatsApp for about $16 billion. More details about this are available here.
The simple truth of the matter is that Facebook’s email service failed to draw the public’s attention. Consequently, Facebook decided to pull the plug on the three-year-old email service.
Back in November 2010, social networking giant Facebook decided to give all its users a new email address, a new @facebook.com email address to be more precise. You know, all the Facebook users who registered with an existing email account, they were all force-fed an additional @facebook.com email account. While I was reserved about this move, others praised it and even went as far as to call Facebook’s email service a “Gmail killer.” Turns out they were wrong – the only thing that died was Facebook’s email service, not Gmail.
Turns out that people did not need another email account and did not want an unsolicited @facebook.com email account. The vast majority of Facebook users, including myself, did not use the email service. Facebook’s popularity and user base grew and grew, that is true. But all the users who joined Facebook, all the people who used Facebook to stay in touch with others, well, they couldn’t care less about Facebook’s email service.
Because very few people used their @facebook.com email account, Facebook decided to shut it down. All emails sent to @facebook.com addresses are now forwarded to the email address set by the user as the primary email address. So if you signed up with EXAMPLE@gmail.com, all emails sent to your @facebook.com will be redirected to EXAMPLE@gmail.com.
The change presented above will happen in early March.
In related news, Facebook recently announced that it entered into an agreement to purchase WhatsApp for about $16 billion. More details about this are available here.
