The press conference regarding Facebook’s approach to messaging is still underway, but two threads of public reaction have triggered this post. First, the description of the “social inbox” where (as a FB spokesperson put it) “We want people to be able to communicate in whatever way they choose: email, text or Facebook message…” sounds suspiciously like “Unified Messaging.” Yet it is both a lot less (meaning it lacks some of the basic voice and video features of a Skype, Office Communicator (now Lync) or other popular IM clients; and it is a lot more, meaning that there are nice-to-have features. For example, messages will be organized by “relationship,” with texts, chat and email from the same friends all weaved together as part of a single conversation. A facebook.com user can pickup a conversation where it left off, with the most recent ones appearing first. (Actually that sounds like the sort of “threading” that always breaks in Gmail).

While monitoring the Tweetstream surrounding the announcement, I noticed that more than a few “unified communications” (UC) experts referred to the service as an example of UC. I strongly disagree. The service doesn’t really unify anything. Facebook is just taking control of all the streams that cross over into its walled garden and then delivering the results in a context that makes it most deliverable to the user. (This approach has already begun to raise privacy concerns exemplified by this Tweet from HARO founder Peter Shankman “So all our chat/email/text/IM history in one place – That Facebook will OWN? No thanks.” I don’t think that’s the kind of UC people want to buy into.

On the other hand, there’s a lot going on under the hood with FB messaging that has nothing to do with UC and showcases the power of RC concept. As the peripatetic Robert Scoble points out in a Tweet “Geeks will like this. Facebook’s new messaging system is built on Cassandra, hBase, Haystack, Thrift, ZooKeeper, memcache…” These are examples of the rich base of open source assets that today’s RC adherents have to work with.

That rich genetic material also includes cloud-based instantiations of Microsoft’s Office Suite as explained in this blog post by Takeshi Numoto, a Corporate VP at Microsoft:

As shared in Facebook’s announcement, Facebook’s new messaging platform integrates the Office Web Apps to enable Facebook users to view Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents with just one click. As you know, Office helps you create stunning documents that bring your ideas to life. Now you can easily share those ideas with your friends and family on Facebook. I’m really excited about being able to make it even easier for people to use Office to access and share information across different devices, networks and platforms. With the Office Web Apps on Facebook, you have even more ways to express yourself with Office and easily share your thoughts with people that are important to you.

If it is “unification” it is highly selective and user powered. True to Darwin and the notion of natural selection, there will be aspects of “facebook.com” that are destined to enjoy high popularity, usage and longevity. With Microsoft’s endorsement (the software giant holds equity in Facebook), it has the potential to become a powerful platform for sharing and collaboration inside and among enterprise employees and partners. I don’t see a robust link to reliable communications infrastructure (meaning a relationship with a network operator) at this time, but would expect some of the global network operators (and infrastructure providers) that are already Microsoft partners to figure out how to profit from business efforts to support (and control) social interactions emanating from desktops and cubicles.

Of course, I’d also like to see more initiatives around support of voice services.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Microsoft, Collaboration, Facebook, Recombinant Communications