Why Facebook’s message overhaul is a big deal

Yesterday Facebook announced a new, unified messaging system. Over the next few months, Facebook users will be able to view messages, chats, email, and SMS messages sent to friends in a single place on Facebook’s site. In the tech world we tend to shrug off these sorts of “incremental” announcements: “Oh, Facebook’s including SMS and email. That’s nice,” we say. Sometimes it’s difficult to step back and see the larger picture.

This kind of announcement deserves our attention. This is how revolutions begin.

Change

Technology companies thrive on change. Tech allows us to explore new ways of doing things we already know how to do. But change isn’t easy.

Making changes isn’t as easy as it sounds. Users of a site or service become familiar with the way a feature works, and any change – even a minor one – can be a shock. Facebook is no stranger to shock; even when they change the subtlest of features on the site, a “bring back the old Facebook” group will pop up within hours.

It’s no surprise that many of the big innovations on the web are fueled by small startup companies that don’t have to worry about appeasing a large number of users. When a company starts from scratch, it can do whatever it likes. Startups face a different challenge; they need to convince users that their way of doing things is better. Startups often aren’t able to get a foothold in an ecosystem with much more established companies in the mix.

The best of all worlds

With their new messaging system, Facebook aims to overcome both challenges. With 250 million people using the site every day, everything they do is noticed and used religiously. At the same time the new system doesn’t change much within the current site; it adds to it. (For another example of a company that decided to add instead of change in a quest to improve, look to Apple.)

It seems like the engineers at Facebook looked at other services like Gmail and Google Wave and decided to truly overhaul the concept of messaging. They even went so far as to reconsider the structure of conversations; the new system is person-based instead of subject-based, allowing users to see a history of all conversations between two people. One of the Facebookers featured in the intro video notes that the new system reminds him of the box of letters his grandparents used to keep. Modern messaging is much more complicated, but the metaphor Facebook’s using is much closer to how conversations happen in person.

As an added bonus, the change is great for all parties involved. It allows users to better track conversations and unify their communication. It also keeps users on the site and encourages them to build their relationship within the Facebook ecosystem; that’s music to the ears of Facebook and their advertisers.

Facebook’s launching an overhaul of how we communicate with friends. This is how email, SMS, and chat is supposed to work. This is how revolutions begin.