6 reasons I don’t need Facebook email.

I don’t want to be curmudgeonly about this, but I just don’t need Zuck’s tentacles wrapped around everything I say to other humans. You can break down my objections into 2 categories: utility and privacy.

Utility, or the lack thereof:

1. I already have 8 email addresses. I’m covered. My brain can hold no more permutations of my username/passwords.
2. Email is not an area wherein I need innovation. I’d do away with it entirely if it weren’t for business communication.
3. Facebook private messaging virtually is email, and it includes the ability to message people you aren’t friends with (so, slightly more useful than email, because I don’t need to know their address). The only thing it lacks is file attachments, which would be easy to incorporate without the new-interface-learning-curve Facebook users hate so much.

Privacy, or the seriousness of the potential lack thereof:

1. Email isn’t particularly social, as Google Buzz so dramatically underlined. I have Xobni and feel creepy enough as it is when I see people’s Facebook picture coming up in their email.
2. Let’s Google our memories for the numerous occasions where Facebook revealed private messages and photos, sent them to the wrong people, skywrote them over our hometowns, etc. Security, not their strong suit. Commitment to privacy, not their strong suit.
3. Do you want Facebook to read your email (necessary for the contextual advertising this is surely destined for)? I delete old private messages already, scared they’ll resurface in some future privacy debacle. I don’t want them to have my browsing history either, xo Rockmelt.

Buzz off, Google

Here are my two reactions to the fundamental non-usefulness (for me, at this time; I reserve the right to eat my words) of Google Buzz.

1. Email does not necessarily represent friendships

Remember when Hotmail went all social? I logged in one day accidentally (I keep the account around so I get a desktop alert through Messenger when something happens on Facebook—how steampunk is that?) and I saw “social” updates like “Paul changed his profile picture” and such. And I was like “Wow. Who cares?”

Email is pretty much a business communication in my universe. I have the Xobni plugin for Outlook, so when I get an email (from anyone) it skulks around and pulls in whatever social data it knows how to find. Typically I see a  professionally appropriate LinkedIn photo grinning back at me. I feel like I’m invading their privacy, for Pete’s sake. It’s uncomfy, because email just doesn’t foster relationships I wish to pursue in that kind of detail.

2. Can’t we just do this through Facebook Connect? Somehow?

I was kind of hoping Google would roll out social search and all that without me having to create a profile. It just seems like surrendering the very last shreds of even the pretense of privacy to get naked with Google on purpose. Google already knows a lot about me. I have an uneasy relationship with their ever-so-slightly-Big-Brother brand. It just feels wrong to give them any more info than I have to. I’m more comfortable spreading my identity out and making Google work a little to profile me, however naive that might be.

Listen, Google, it’s not you, it’s me, : I just don’t email my friends, & I’ve got too much social inertia on other sites to create another profile. Thanks, though!