Way back in June, Nick talked about how Google Me was being rumoured as an attempt to take on the monolith that is Facebook. Well, four days ago Google denied that they were building a traditional social network to rival Facebook, no, they are building something else that involves the “social” element on a tier somewhere.
While that is amusing in itself, the recent announcement by Facebook has poked the stick back into Google’s eyes. Facebook Messages, also known as Project Titan, will apparently combine instant messaging, sms, email and Facebook messages into one lovely serving of technological helpfulness.
This is going to be an interesting 2011 I think. This new messaging service from Facebook and Google’s constant stream of exciting announcements. What next for us happy consumers who are lapping up these deliverables like candy?
Well apparently, at the press conference announcing Project Titan Mark Zuckerberb, founder of Facebook (in case you haven’t seen The Social Network at the movies yet), said that he believes email is past its prime and not going to be a part of the modern era.
This is an interesting assertion to say the least. When email first came about I was an early adopter. It was weird, it was strange, and we all loved the fact that we could send instant messages to one another, even if it meant fighting endless battles with dial-up modems and emails disappearing into the ether.
Now email is so much a part of my life I have to schedule time to look at it or else I’d spend far too long reading and replying to emails, and not doing anything productive. However, the idea that texts and instant messages are the way forward is a bit of a sticky point for me.
Call me old and decrepit, call me stuck in my ways, but how are texts and sms’ going to replace email? It took a very, very long time before emails were seen as legally acceptable documents that counted as “proof” in a business environment and, honestly, I don’t see any chance of “txt me r u hre?” receiving the same recognition.
Although, recent twitter debacles have probably started the downward spiral in that regard…
Whatever your thoughts may be, it will be interesting to see how Google and Facebook round off against each other next year. I can already see a thousand cartoons being drawn as the big guns go head to head.