Facebook pulls plug on email service

Facebook has quietly scrapped its dedicated email service after admitting that take up of the @facebook.com address – which triggered dire warnings that it could kill off millions of email marketing records – had been pitiful.
The scheme was first launched in 2010 as part of the Facebook Messaging service but was branded a flop within 12 months after a SmartFocus (formerly Emailvision) analysis showed Facebook email addresses accounted for fewer than 0.0015% of all permission emails – equivalent to just 1,300 per million.
This was a far cry from the prediction that half of online consumers would switch to an @facebook.com address and render obsolete millions of email marketing addresses and even kill-off Gmail.
In the summer of 2012, Facebook tried to counter the poor take-up by automatically replacing email addresses listed in users contacts with a @facebook.com address. It meant that users who wanted to keep their original email address had to manually go into their contact details and change it back to its original setting.
Announced through a notification message to Facebook email users, the company said that by early March the service would no longer be available.
A representative wrote: “We’re making this change because most people haven’t been using their Facebook email addresses, and we wanted to make it easier to view all your emails in one place. Plus, we can focus on improving our mobile messaging experience for everyone.”

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