Facebook Messages is a land grab

And with support for IMAP built in to Messages, Facebook gains a way to keep in contact with its user base, even when they are away from a web browser or a reasonably fast internet connection.

For all our love of chat or, as Zuckerberg puts it, "simple, real-time, immediate personal" communications, you do need to be online, at more than GPRS speeds, for to make use of it. In much of the world, a service that works on a relatively simple data-equipped phone as email does is another good way to keep in touch with what is happening in the online world.

Facebook Messages might not be about to replace the millions of Exchange email accounts in use in business today, but it shows the social networking site's growing maturity as well as its importance to businesses. Facebook is giving users something they clearly value email in return for something that Facebook values from them: their time.

Stephen Pritchard is a contributing editor at IT PRO.

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