Facebook is anticipated to release a webmail service early this next week
Move over Gmail, there’s a new webmail provider in town. On November 15th, Facebook will unveil Project Titan, a web based email service similar to what Google, Yahoo and Microsoft offer, among others. According to TechCrunch, Facebook will launch the webmail service at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco early next week.
The service is expected to offer a personal @facebook.com email address to more than 500 million users currently with Facebook accounts. Facebook email service, if announced, would eclipse even the largest email providers by a large margin. According to comScore, Windows Live Hotmail has 361 million users, Yahoo Mail comes in at 273 million users with Gmail currently in third at 193 million users.
Offering such a service would expand Facebook’s reach and open up a host of possibilities for changing how email is used. Social data and connections could be leveraged to prioritize mail. One on one emails could instantly be opened into conversations that includes a group of friends that are part of a social circle. The possibilities are endless.
The move would also put Facebook on a new level placing them at the likely center of communications for many of it’s 500 million users. Adding email capabilities to sharing messages, links, videos and pictures would be a coveted suite of services.
