14 DAY TRIAL // After Facebook decided to celebrate its sixth birthday in style, by launching a brand new homepage design and announcing it hit the 400 million users landmark, it looks like the social network isn't resting on its laurels. TechCrunch reports that Facebook may be working on a full-blown webmail client which is actually rather close to launch. It's just a rumor at this point, but it actually doesn't come as much of a surprise.
The source says that the product is known internally as Project Titan. The goal is to create a complete webmail client and messaging system to replace the existing one which hasn't exactly been a fan favorite. The current Facebook messaging system has seen some improvements over the years, yet it still proves quite unwieldy. Apparently, the plan now is to completely scrap it and replace it with a Facebook email service to rival the likes of Gmail or Yahoo Mail.
Interestingly, it wouldn't be the first time a social network launches an email service, MySpace did it last year when it too replaced the internal messaging system and became an email provider to some moderate success. Unlike MySpace's implementation though, Facebook will have full support for POP and IMAP, meaning that users will be able to access their email accounts from desktop or mobile clients. As for the address itself, it will be based on your chosen vanity URL nickname, something like [email protected].
Email isn't exactly cutting edge Internet technology, but it has been around since before the world wide web and is going to be around for quite a while longer. It's hard to become a big player in email these days, Google did it with Gmail, but it's still behind the likes of Yahoo and Microsoft almost six years after launching. Facebook, though, has an unique position to succeed giving 400 million users their own email account would instantly make it the largest email provider in the world, significantly bigger than the current leader Yahoo Mail. Of course, it's unlikely that all, even most Facebook users, will actually start using the new email service, but even a percentage of those would make the social network a serious contender in the space.