Facebook is closing its @facebook.com messaging/email service, some four years after its launch back in 2010.
Introduced on stage at an event by Mark Zuckerburg in November 2010, the over-riding idea of the email service was to collaborate all of your communications avenues into one conversation stream.
It featured a “Social Inbox” that let you personalise how you receive your messages, and it was meant to let you decide how you want to talk to your friends: via SMS, chat, email or Messages.
Facebook isn’t shying away from the giving the reasoning behind the closing, saying: “We’re making this change because most people haven’t been using their Facebook email address, and we can focus on improving our mobile messaging experience for everyone.”
From now on, emails sent to an “@facebook.com” address will be forwarded to the personal email address from which the member signed up for the site.
The change will happen in early March.
The system came under fire in 2012 when Facebook replaced users’ published email addresses with their “@facebook.com” email on their profile.
The move comes just a few days after Facebook’s surprise purchase of messaging app WhatsApp for $19bn (£11.4bn).