Interesting article regarding Facebook’s entrant into the world of email provider. New release called Facebook Messages

The gist of the article:

Facebook (FB)  is combining text messaging, instant messaging (IM) and email into one product. FB has already rolled out limited @facebook.com email account to a few selected FB users. Some experts are chiming in that this will change the entire email marketing landscape because retailers will not be able to bombard @facebook users.  The only emails getting through will be the ones that are connected to FB user.

According to the article these are the unique characteristic of the @Facebook is offering:

1. @facebook – limit access to friends and family into one email account bucket while non-friends will be siphoned into another bucket (folder)
2. All chats, emails and post will be documented and strung together – so that users will have the history of all conversations readily available.
3. The bcc and cc  will not be part of their features and no more subject lines either.

Furthermore, the article points out that the “Like” button will not only be important for getting your brand notice, but it  will be crucial to get as much “like votes”. This may be the only way for marketers to find their marketing message into the user primary  folder, in other words into their friends and family folder.

Finally, the last bit is about the importance of marketing messages usability for smart phones to ensure that users will actually or be entice to read marketing emails using their phones.

My take:

It definitely will be interesting to see how this feature will be used by the FB user base. I can see the appeal of having one platform to manage all your personal conversation. I use IM alot, I won’t have to log into my IM or Messager account any longer, I won’t have to text on my phone then email separately and then go back to my text to see the history of the conversation, so definitely this feature is very appealing, why haven’t the other guys think of that?

On the other hand, as a marketer, I am going have to get a lot more creative. I wonder if Brands that have FB presence will be able to access their fan base easily without being bucketed or is this the main point that fans are bucketed into another folder. If that is the case, engaging conversation is all the more crucial because there are so much distraction out there it will be difficult to hold people attention for too long unless its interesting.

Have you read this article?  If so, please share with us your opinion on this new Facebook release? Are you loving it because you can stop using your @gmail and @yahoo and  other the @email accounts? OR are you hating it because your job just got harder?

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I wanted to share this story that I read about the UK being the King of Ecommerce. The most interesting part of the article for me is the snippet below:

“Everyone thinks the global Silicon Valley-based companies are driving growth, but this report makes clear that in the U.K. it is coming from the ‘Mom’ and ‘Pop’ businesses. They now have global footprints, they are selling to the long tail, and they are making their businesses more efficient.”

What does this mean?  It means that the opportunity for American Mom & Pop stores to capture a piece of the ecommerce pie is still HUGE. The USA can be Queen of Ecommerce (for now)  I am inspired to help as many ecommerce entrepreneurs take this challenge on.

Read the full article  here and share your thoughts with us.