The tech world is bracing itself for a shake-up as rumours that Facebook is about to launch an email service to challenge Gmail reached fever pitch.
The ubiquitous social networking company has kept mum on the issue so far but is expected to make an announcement in San Francisco at 18:00 GMT Monday evening (8.00pm South African time).
In recent weeks Google and Facebook have butted heads, ostensibly over the issue of ‘openness’. Google tried to block Facebook from importing users’ Google contacts saying it could only do so if it reciprocated the gesture. But Facebook, which doesn’t allow users to export their contacts when they join other sites, simply set up a work-around that allowed it to do so anyway.
The two companies are also said to be fighting over engineering talent. A number of former Google engineers have moved over to Facebook and Google recently increased salaries by 10%, in an apparent bid to retain staff.
@facebook.com
Technology blog site Tech Crunch believes that Facebook users may soon have access to email through a web address such as facebook.com or fb.com. Facebook’s long-awaited foray into email, dubbed Project Titan, is widely considered to be a potential “Gmail killer”.
“This is something that’s been rumoured for many weeks, and it’s excellent!” said Birgitta Cederstrom, Head of Africa ICT for global consultancy firm Frost & Sullivan.
Cederstrom said the move is indicative of a recent trend in the industry, that is, the need to provide value-added services to clients. “You need to have value added services for the user or else they go elsewhere. Facebook has half a billion users, all talking, chatting and posting mini-tweets on a daily basis,” she said.
So why not email?
According to Frost & Sullivan, as of September this year, Hotmail had 360-million users, Yahoo! mail had 273-million users and Gmail had 193-million users.
Facebook meanwhile has over 500-million active users and more than 200-million of these access the site using their mobile phones. Convincing even a fraction of these to take up Facebook mail could spell trouble for established email services. It could potentially also provide an entry into email for millions of users who do not have regular internet access except through their mobile phones.
While Facebook appears to be positioning itself as a direct competitor to Google in this area, analysts say it’s too early to tell whether its new offering will in fact be the “Gmail killer”.
Advertising next
Cederstrom however believes Facebook’s foray into value-added services will go further than email. “It’s only a matter of time before Facebook begins to sell advertising but [we] predict that will be the next phase,” she said.
This is where some speculate the real battle for market share will begin — not in capturing users but in monetising them. Wired staffer Ryan Singel believes that Facebook’s in-depth knowledge of its users could help advertisers design more targeted marketing strategies.
Facebook knows a lot more about its users than Google does. Every time you click the “Like” button, which indicates a user’s approval of a comment, personality, group or product, you send a signal to Facebook about your interests. And because you’ve filled in all your profile information, it also knows exactly who you are: your age, gender, education level and career — even who your friends are and what they like. That kind of information is marketing gold.
Google’s advertising strategies, on the other hand, are based on the words you search for or put in your emails. This information is a lot less specific.
Singel says Facebook is the only online company that’s managed to build online identities in this way and believes this could go a long way to solving the media’s problem of identifying its readers. And, according to him, it’s this feat that could “single-handedly save the online publishing industry”.