You’ve Got Mail... and Messages and Texts and Spam and Comments and Likes and Links and Other

Since last night’s unveiling of Project Titan – Facebook’s new proposed social inbox tool – the web’s a-chatter with what-ifs and what-nows.

The invention, a messaging system which syncs single-history conversations from email, mobile and chat programmes, is posing exciting and unnerving questions.

For the youth, at whom the system is primarily aimed, it serves a couple of purposes. Mainly, it’s the ease of use and speed that the tool allows that really appeals as does its casual attitude. There’s no longer any need for a subject line or even for the formality of paragraph structure – an email is as straightforward as an SMS. But because of its interface being Facebook, the new inbox also filters incoming communication into two folders: one for friends and one for everything else. A big plus for the Facebook user, a real hurdle for the marketer.

Should this social inbox really take off, those in the communications industry are going to have to be clever to ensure they’re not relegated to the ‘Other’ folder.

Signing up for the new Facebook mail set-up would be step number one, despite it not being available to the public as of yet. While waiting for access, Facebook should be included in campaign testing – and rather before the @facebook.com addresses start appearing than after.

Making sure their Facebook page's name and vanity URL are ready (and linked to the brand they email from) marketers should also be encouraging as many fans as possible to Like their page. This may help their messaging make it through to the friends folder.

Since the subject line has been retired, the ‘snippet’ or first sentence of the email will become increasingly important to differentiate the message from other messages the sender has sent. It’s going to be the pivotal element of this communication.

Lastly, becoming a friend of the fan is going to become critical. The more brands are trusted and the more they add real and actual value to the lives of the Facebook user, the less likely they are to suffer anonymity in this realm. And that means real friends, not fake friends. Pictures, personal profiles and ongoing exchanges will be expected from those who want to interact.

Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for this tool is to make email more social. Whether this is a good or bad idea remains to be seen, but in the interim, brands will do themselves no harm by scooting up to their audiences and getting a little friendlier.