Facebook To Pit Project Titan Against Google Gmail: Social networking giant Facebook is set to release Project Titan tomorrow in order to challenge Google's Gmail and other messaging solutions for Web-based e-mail clients including Yahoo Mail and Windows Live Hotmail.
Different news outlets have been invited by Facebook to attend a 10 a.m. launch event in San Francisco It is to be noted that San Francisco will also host the Web 2.0 Summit and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to address the summit.
Tech website TechCrunch reported that Project Titan, a Webmail client, will include personal @facebook.com e-mail addresses for 500 million-plus users of Facebook. ZDNet added that Titan will also be integrated with Microsoft's Office Web Apps suite, allowing Facebook users to create and share Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote documents.
Facebook spokesperson Meredith Chin declined to "comment on speculation around future products." Facebook's decision to come up with a Webmail client will change the face of the email industry as the messaging platform of Facebook already enables direct message capability and one-to-many sharing of messages, links, photos and videos.
Talking to eWEEK, Altimeter Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang said, "People use a variety of communication tools in their daily arsenal with both social networking, SMS, and e-mail as primary tools. By extending their product features, they're poised to spend more time with consumers, increasing the revenue opportunities. This is a good move for them."
We all know that Facebook has the potential and has enough resources at its disposal to do this. It may be recalled that the company acquired social network aggregator FriendFeed last year.
