Editorial: Facebook won’t kill e-mail

We spend a lot of time on Facebook. You can’t really blame us — we have to find out which… We spend a lot of time on Facebook. You can’t really blame us — we have to find out which people we went to high school with got engaged. But the time we spend on the social networking beast might expand with the addition of Facebook e-mail.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the site’s messaging system will soon include e-mail — giving each user an “@facebook.com” e-mail address.

According to The Huffington Post, “Facebook’s latest evolution of Messages ties in multiple forms of communication — SMS [Short Message Service], IMs [Instant Messages], e-mail — from Facebook and other platforms to allow users to communicate in real-time, on-the-go through whichever messaging tool they prefer.”

The new service will provide “seamless messaging, conversation history and a social inbox,” says Zuckerberg.

In an article in The New York Times, analyst Jeremiah Owyang said that “all of the e-mail vendors should be worried — Google, Yahoo, MSN. All of these platforms have been trying to add social networking features to their services.”

We had to wonder why something as simple as adding another communications features to Facebook was such a big deal.

Perhaps this announcement has e-mail service providers everywhere shaking in their domains, worrying that Facebook e-mail will make them obsolete. After all, what purpose was there for AOL Instant Messenger after Facebook chat was introduced?

But we don’t think Gmail or any other e-mail provider has anything to worry about.

Facebook might attempt to blur the line between professional and social life, but we feel the separation is becoming increasingly important — especially for job-seeking college students.

The crowds we communicate with on Facebook and those we communicate with on e-mail are very distinctive. Not many of us e-mail our friends when we can Facebook them. At the same time, we prefer using e-mail to contact our professors as well as our employers.

According to Zuckerberg, seven characteristics will come to define “next generation” messaging: seamless, informal, immediate, personal, simple, minimal and short.

While he might think traditional e-mail systems are too formal, we argue that this is necessary in most college students’ e-mail composing circumstances.

So perhaps Facebook e-mail will make communicating with your friends and family more convenient, but we recommend you hang on to that Gmail account. You’re going to need it to apply for that internship, or, you know, to sign up for a Facebook to begin with.