Facebook overhauls its messaging system

[Refugee 7]

Editor's note: CNN will report from Facebook's event, which starts at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. Pacific). Look for Twitter updates @cnntech.

(CNN) -- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday said the site is overhauling its messaging system to help users communicate faster and more seamlessly with their friends.

The new system offers integration across multiple communications channels, a single conversation history and a "social inbox" for filtering messages.

"This is not an e-mail killer," Zuckerberg said. "This is a messaging system that includes e-mail aspects to it."

Facebook will roll the new feature out slowly over the next few weeks. The site currently fields 4 billion messages a day, he said.

Zuckerberg said he and his engineers were inspired by chats with high school students who said they rarely use e-mail because "it's too slow" and "too formal."

Facebook had been expected to announce a Web-based e-mail service at its event in San Francisco, California, according to multiple reports.

The system would help Facebook compete more directly against Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and Gmail -- three of the most popular free e-mail services.

Facebook already offers a messaging feature to facilitate private discussions between its 500 million users, but the new service is believed to let users talk to non-Facebook addresses.

Facebook has quarreled with Google, which runs Gmail, when the search giant protested the social networking company's stringent policies on exporting users' data. Paul Buchheit, the former Google employee who created Gmail, is leaving his job at Facebook on Friday to join an incubator for technology startups.

Blogs from the Los Angeles Times, TechCrunch and Inside Facebook cited anonymous sources who said a Facebook e-mail client is coming.

Mashable founder Pete Cashmore, in his weekly column for CNN.com, said a Facebook e-mail service would help Facebook combine social networking, chat and e-mail to become arguably, the leading hub of online communication.

[nurktwin 2,143]

does anyone really believe this? it's an update to find out more about you!!!!!

[Nanten 0]

Regardless of what its purpose is, I personally don't plan to use it.

[Beamish 0]

Me either. I already have an email for communicating with non-FB friends. I'm sure my cousins who spend hours on FB will love it, though. It would be easier for them.

[AmyLou 5]

hard to say, depends how effective it is. I do know my sons don't use email nearly as much as we do - barely at all except for school communications - so maybe this will be useful to them.

[agirl 0]

Damn! I'm getting too old for this crap. I'm just getting into their present message system. Always something new.

[Refugee 7]

^ I'm with you, Carol. Everytime I learn something from something they new and improved on, it frustrates me and turns me off. Like MySpace. :095: