Facebook Just Doesn’t Like Your Email and Here’s What You Can(nnot) do About It
A long time ago, in a social network not far away from your home, the owners wanted to change the way you get your messages. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and the founder of Facebook knew that there was a problem with the chat/inbox system and tried to solve it with a unified inbox.
So, if you were away from your computer or your internet connection fails during the chat session you’re having on Facebook with your friends, some messages would probably get lost. On the other hand, there’s the messages inbox, which was the place for private chats long before Facebook chat got released. And then there’s the email, same old email as it was for the last 30 years, taking private information away from Facebook.
Let’s Create Our Own Email!
From the Facebook’s point of view, email is a major pain in the neck, communication-wise. If you’re not using Facebook chat or Facebook messages, but email instead, Facebook loses. It loses some valuable information about you, your friends and your communication habits which it could (and will) use for marketing purposes. Oh c’mon, you really thought that you’re having “private” chats with someone, just because Facebook says so? Remember, everything gets logged somewhere, and no one will ever keep your private messages on servers just because they feel like that.
Wanting to defeat “the email”, Facebook announced that every user will get an email address: username@facebook.com and you’ll be able to use that email only within Facebook messages. OK, this had FAILURE written all over it; something like Google’s attempt(s) to get into social networking game. Just when you forgot you have your @facebook.com email, Facebook decided to remind you about it. In a very uncool way.
We Know Your Email Better Than You Do
In your About section of your Facebook profile, you’ve probably set your @gmail.com or whatever email address you have, right? Check it again, now. Chances are that there is your @facebook.com address set as the default. Seems that Facebook decided to “give you some new features” and in the process changed your default email address. But wait – you have the ability to choose the default one!
Dear Facebook, why would you do this? I don’t need you to change my emails, no matter how much options I get to change them later. The worst thing is, there was no notification about it, no one asked “Would you like to change your default email address to @facebook.com one?“. To make matter worse, when somebody sends you an email to your Facebook email, the message goes to Messages > Other and you don’t get any notification that you have a message in your inbox. Way to go.
That’s not all – if you had your Facebook contacts synced with your smartphone, because of this change you might have lost some contacts – check them.
I like Facebook. I love it. It’s a strong and powerful social network and it doesn’t need stuff like this. Hey Big Blue, you’re not Google. Don’t be that desperate.
