Facebook's New Communication Hub Much More than Email

At a press event today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will soon include an entire communications hub that brings together all kinds of digital communication, including email, IM, Facebook messages and SMS texts.

The new Facebook messaging service

In the new Facebook messaging service, all forms of communication will be condensed into a single system. The company showed a demo where a user received an email from a friend while chatting with someone else. The email actually showed up in the chat window, and when the user responded in the chat window, Facebook sent the response back by email.

Zuckerberg said these features will roll out slowly over a matter of months. The company will offer the service by invitation only at first while they test and refine it. After that it will continue to roll out slowly to all users. The focus is mainly on text-based communication for now, but Zuckerberg hinted that things such as VoIP and video chat could be added in the future.