I came across an interesting blog post by my classmate Anita Chang where she links to an external article that talks about Facebook’s new concept that will defeat Google’s Gmail. As Anita mentioned, the promotional video created by Facebook has striking similarities to the one that we saw in class about how simple Google-docs is; thus, I personally feel that it was a pretty shallow move by the social network to be boasting about their new concept but copying their opponent’s idea because it shows very little innovation and creativity. Also, probably due the bias I already had, I felt that the video wasn’t effective at all and for a Facebook user myself I actually got more confused with all the ways I can now message and connect with someone.
However, what I did appreciate from the video was the fact that Facebook is placing emphasis on messages feeling more like conversations because that is definitely one of the biggest flaws about emails as they do come across very formal and structured. The video then goes on about all the different ways that one can communicate with others and this is where I got a little skeptical with their idea as people use different forms of communication dependent on the people thy’re communicating with and their purpose. For me Facebook is where I will message and chat with my family and friends, but I will never dare send an email to my employer through Facebook because it comes across extremely unprofessional; furthermore, some people would like to protect their privacy by having the ability to email their colleagues without allowing them go through their personal information on Facebook. As a result, I think Facebook has a good concept but it’s rather unpractical and it will be pretty difficult to interrupt the norm of emailing in people’s lives. So I disagree with Anita on the fact that this will be a successful launch as Facebook’s current promotions have not yet convinced me, a current and adaptable Facebook user, and will probably not convince the majority of the population either.
Just a little additional comment to this post is that I find it quite ironic that Facebook is finding all these complicated ways to improve its messaging system to sound more like a conversation when its own Facebook chat has an enormous reputation for being a failure – constant disconnections, unable to see whether one is typing, small conversation space etc. I would appreciate it more if they could fix what Facebook chat is expected to do instead of finding all these complicated ways to beat Gmail.
