On Monday, November 15, 2010 Facebook introduced their newest innovation, called “Messages.” It’s similar to an “email service” ( @facebook.com ) but the purpose is really to bring chat, email and SMS into a single messaging platform that keeps a conversation history in a single thread regardless of the platform used to send and receive (chat, email or SMS). I noticed in their announcement and explanations, they’re using some language similar to ours in promoting this new system by telling users its a way to stay connected with all the content that’s important to then in “real time” across multiple platforms. So, I decided to look into it and see how we stack up against the giant of the social networking world and one of the largest search-online-advertising firms ever created. NATURALLY, I think our system trumps their new deal hands down! I’ll explain why in this article.
In my research for this article, I came across a Computerworld article of today’s date, that absolutely confirms that GlobalTmail has been ahead of the curve for YEARS: “Facebook's move confirms the convergence that is taking place between collaborative technologies and the shift towards real-time communications regardless of the method or device.” ( http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=5A96E7D6-1A64-67EA-E4E4C6E55174CEF7 , Computerworld November 17, 2010)
This is “real-time communications regardless of the method or device” what GlobalTmail has been working toward for several years now, but with a very big, very important difference from Facebook’s new offering: WE FOCUS ON CELL PHONE USE! Every study out there says that the cell phone will be the communications platform of the future, and that by 2020 most people will access the Internet from their cell phone rather than from a computer. We’re here RIGHT NOW capitalizing on this future trend! With that, here’s a brief analysis of the new Facebook product, called “Messages”, compared to GlobalTmail.
Facebook Seamless Messaging: “Messages” (the new offering from Facebook) brings together email, IM & SMS plus their own chat system, into a single thread with one conversation history. It allows people to shoot messages back & forth and have the message arrive on whatever the recipient likes best (email, chat or SMS). It’s similar to email in that you can have an email name (username@facebook.com), but there’s no To:, From:, CC, BCC or Subject line. You simply start out talking b/c you know who you’re talking to. Also, Messages provides 3 distinct mailboxes: Social Inbox, Other and Junk:
- The Social Inbox contains communication from so-called “friends”. These are the people who are already on your friends list, or whom Facebook otherwise determines is worthy of a top listing within your messages. You can also block people from the Messages box when you don’t wish to hear from them. Or, you can add them to your Social Inbox by simply dragging and dropping a message from another box there (Messages remembers who you added to your Messages box and puts them there the next time). But in the absence of creating this “white list” of people you want to hear from, this new program does that automatically for you.
- The Other box holds all those emails that you should get, but they aren’t really “friends”, such as your bank statement, bills, subscription to a newsletter, business announcements, etc. The assumption is that these aren’t a very high priority and can be relegated to a lower priority mailbox.
- The Junk mailbox holds all your spam and unwanted messages, just like other email providers do.
A smart phone application is available that provides mobile access as well. This service received massive press coverage during and after the Monday announcement, so I thought it was worthy of discussion here. Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, says this is NOT email, despite the fact that many people have been calling this a “Gmail Killer”, but he denies it. Most analysts I read concur with Zuckerberg. “Messages” does not replace email, especially for business use. But it will certainly keep a lot of people on the Facebook site even more than their current statics show! (They already blow away most of the metrics from any other online company such as time on site, frequency of use, etc.)
Side-by-Side Comparison of Facebook Seamless Messages and GlobalTmail Services
To be clear, we do NOT directly compete with Facebook’s new “Messages” system. But because they are heavily promoting their new ability to stay in touch with people in ‘real time’, we thought it would be fun to see just how much of the “things” people like to do online are really included in that capability. We built our whole system from the outset – starting 5 years ago – with this real-time notification capability. They’re just now discovering a very small portion of what GlobalTmail is all about. In fact, even though we’re not a social network company, we DO provide most of the same functions of their new Messages system, with the notable exception of the “single thread” to see all conversations with people. But that’s because we don’t intend to “be” a social networking site. Instead, we provide a robust suite of tools to keep you connected in real-time with the functions most people like to do with their computers and the Internet. But, because they have recently recognized the market need for consolidating several different communications platforms (email, SMS, their internal chat and IM systems) in one application, I’m presenting a side-by-side comparison to see how we stack up against the mighty Facebook and their new service. We recognized this cross-platform need years ago, but instead of limiting our service to “only” social networking, ours applies to 9 different popular activities, of which only one is social networking. And of course, OURS includes a platform that is completely missing from the new Facebook Messages system: Powerful voice messages in a natural human voice (YOURS!) to any VoIP, land line or cell phone. Because they are now promoting their new system as a method of staying connected in “real time”, I thought a side-by-side comparison would be an interesting way to compare our two different systems. So here it is!
| FEATURES | FACEBOOK MESSAGES | GLOBALTMAIL |
| Specialty inbox collects only those messages you want | Yes | Yes |
| Secondary inbox collects legitimate “less wanted” messages | Yes | Yes |
| Junk inbox collects unwanted messages | Yes | No |
| Unwanted messages expire & are deleted without your effort | No | Yes |
| Single-thread history of “conversations” from 4 different platforms | Yes | No |
| Internal messaging system similar to email | Yes | Yes |
| Specify platform (email, IM, SMS) on which to receive messages | Yes | Yes |
| File attachments can be sent | Yes | Yes |
| Control who sends messages to your inbox | Yes | Yes |
| Get messages delivered to most Instant Messaging (IM) providers | Yes | Yes |
| Create groups to whom messages can be simultaneously delivered | Yes | Yes |
| Create exclusive group name that cannot be used by others (fee) | No | Yes |
| Subscription to your groups available to entire user database | No | Yes |
| Your groups are ‘searchable’ by all users | No | Yes |
| Specialty inbox collects only those messages you request | No | Yes |
| Messages expire on their own, eliminate need to delete | No | Yes |
| Receive digitized voice notifications on your cell phone | No | Yes |
| Receive digitized voice notifications on VoIP lines & land lines | No | Yes |
| Receive pre-recorded human voice messages on your cell phone | No | Yes |
| Receive pre-recorded human voice messages on land lines | No | Yes |
| Receive messages on almost any social network site | No | Yes |
| Save searches & get instant notification when a match is posted | No | Yes |
| Send bulk email with robust email design tools | No | Yes |
| Get paid for referring others to the service (2/3 of all company revenue) | No | Yes |
| Aggregated search function from many search engines of entire Internet | No | Yes |
| You maintain total control over who delivers messages to primary inbox | No | Yes |
| Complete auction system to browse, search & bid on anything | No | Yes |
| Items on which you bid followed on cell phone plus all other platforms | No | Yes |
| Upon notification of competing bids, instantly increase bid from phone | No | Yes |
| Complete match-making functions include unlimited free contacts | No | Yes |
| Specific coupon search tool allows you to find all coupons quickly | No | Yes |
| Free professional design tool for coupons to use online & in print | No | Yes |
| Internal email/message system includes free voicemail function | No | Yes |
| Free online classified advertising w/description, photos, video, & links | No | Yes |
| Online classified description includes hyperlink to any content | No | Yes |
| Send classified ad listings in your own voice to phones (fee) | No | Yes |
| Free online auction listings w/description, photos, video & links | No | Yes |
| Online auction listing description includes hyperlink to any content | No | Yes |
| Send auction listings to phones w/telephone voice & SMS bidding (fee) | No | Yes |
| Buy deeply discounted gift cards & certificates (limited quantities) | No | Yes |
| Get alert on phone when discounted cards & certificates are posted | No | Yes |
| Instant & scheduled delivery of your voice message to phones (fee) | No | Yes |
| Create opt-in bulk SMS delivery for advertising & announcements (fee) | No | Yes |
| Single dashboard to control many functions (SIAMES-CTC) | No | Yes |
| Include promo code in voice message for user to link to any content | No | Yes |
| FREE pay-per-click advertising (i.e. ‘free-per-click’ not ‘pay-per-click’) | No | Yes |
In my research for this article, I also discovered some interesting factoids about Facebook. Thought you might be interested to note the following, quoted from their big announcement on Monday, November 15, 2010:
- There are 350 million people actively using the messaging system on Facebook today.
- More than 4 Billion messages are sent through the Facebook messaging system each day.
- According to Zuckerberg, “the vast majority of these messages are one-to-one messages between users,” not listserv style.
- “This is the biggest engineering team Facebook has ever put together for a new product – 15 engineers,” says Bosworth.
- “The team has been working on this for well more than a year now,” says Zuckerberg. “15 months,” says Boz.
- The growth of Facebook’s messaging service is “growing at a much faster rate” than Facebook’s user base, according to Zuckerberg.
- “We’re giving people an @facebook.com email address,” says Bosworth. The address is entirely optional for users who wish to sign up.The initial system of launch is invite only to members of the press, and will be tested with user feedback over time to gauge how to expand.
Stay tuned for more great info about GlobalTmail!
After reading this blog I feel that I have gain a lot of good information regarding the topic which will definitely help me in future. Blogs like these should be really kept updated such as this blog.I personally thank to this blogger for doing such a great work.
Posted by: used computers | January 09, 2011 at 10:43 PM
I also say WOW GOOD JOB... JIMMY BORLAND
Posted by: JIMMY BORLAND | November 19, 2010 at 03:01 PM
After reading your blog all I have to say is WOW DENNIS DAYBELL
Posted by: Dennis Daybell | November 19, 2010 at 05:47 AM