Facebook, one of the largest social networking websites in the world, has announced the launch of a new messaging system aimed at helping all of its users’ messages to be accessed from one central location.
Students often use their laptops between classes to access social networking sites, like mechanical engineering sophomore Melissa Delfuente, who logged into her Facebook on Wednesday at the UC-Satellite. | Kendra Berglund/The Daily Cougar
The new system would give users an “@facebook.com” e-mail address that would erase the subject line and instead combine messages from an individual’s e-mail, instant-messaging accounts and cell phones into one thread from each person.
This could help many students who have several mail accounts, receive multiple messages and sometimes find it difficult to catch up.
“It is a good idea because I hate to have to check my e-mail separately,” marketing senior Nicole Baker said. “So if it’s just coming to my Facebook, it’s a one-stop shop.”
In addition, Facebook would use adjustable settings to rank messages in order of importance.
“Because we know who your friends are, we can do some really good filtering for you,” said CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg in a CNN article.
At a news event on Nov. 15, Facebook software engineer Andrew Bosworth said this has been among the company’s biggest undertakings. The project took about 18 months of work from 15 engineers, making it the largest team the company has ever devoted to a new product.
The ranking system would break the inbox into three separate folders: social, other and spam.
“The ranking system is the innovation automated messaging needs,” creative writing senior Brett Forsberg said. “Spam creates a fragmented inbox, and the new system might be able to circumvent that.”
The combination of messaging from numerous sources may create potential privacy issues.
“If someone hacks into your account, all of your accounts are compromised,” photography junior Danielle Fessler said.
Some users who said they find it convenient admitted that they still wouldn’t be able to use the new system because of other restrictions.
“It would be interesting to have to only check one website,” ASLI junior Lindsay Van Note said. “However, most businesses and companies are blocking Facebook.”
Some students prefer to keep their professional e-mail accounts separate from their personal social networking account.
“Social networking should stay with social networking,” theater senior Cassandra Rios said. “I really think it should stay separate from (any kind of) business aspect.”
BAD idea. Now they want to spy on our email/messages? No thanks.
Still, Facebook's a good way to communicate with other people so I think it's a good system. I mean most people use it a lot…