Facebook announced its new messaging system earlier this week. They have also released the above nifty video that walks through the changes brought about by the new system.

Two things jump out from the video. Firstly, you bet they are serious about messaging this time around. It is fair to assume that the current messaging is the best kept secret among Facebook’s features. Even the few users who are aware seldom prefer it to regular email. The new changes promise to change that and make messaging a crucial tool for Facebook users.

The second thing that jumps out is that the new system is not email. What it really is may be a little less obvious, even after watching a four minute video, but it definitely is much more than email.

If not email, then what?

The best explanation is to think of it as a system that could replace email for casual messaging. Facebook has already replaced email for non-private, casual messages. But, thanks to the myriad Facebook privacy issues, email continues to be the popular fallback for private messaging. The new system aims to change that by bringing the sense of privacy users get from email, right within Facebook, where they already spend a lot of time.

Another reason users have had to go back to their email is to communicate with people outside Facebook (or those that are not active on Facebook). The new messaging system makes it easy to send messages to the email boxes and phones of such contacts. Further, by providing a @Facebook.com account, it also lets those outside Facebook to contact Facebook users via email.

Lastly, by providing the option to specify if we want to receive our messages via email or SMS or on IM, the new system further lets us untie ourselves from the email paradigm. Admittedly, this last feature is a little too remniscent of Google Wave.

One thing that may not be worth looking forward to is that Facebook will also have access to our private conversations and can use it for targeting us with more ads. Lucky for us, Gmail has got us used to having our private messages parsed!

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