Facebook Inc. introduced an email service for users

Facebook Inc. introduced an email service for users of its social networking site, intensifying competition with Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

Facebook is giving all users a "facebook.com @" email address, Mark Zuckerberg, the company's CEO, said today at an event in San Francisco. The new service will include text messaging and instant messaging, as well as traditional email.

By adding e-mail, Palo Alto, California, Facebook offers an alternative to Google's Gmail, the fastest growing service web mail in the last year. It also increases pressure on Microsoft and Yahoo, who are competing for the attention of Web users who rely more on social sites, and contact information with friends.

"This is not a murderer-mail," said Zuckerberg. "Maybe we can help push messaging is to make this time more towards simple, real, immediate and personal experience."

Gmail had 193.3 million global users in September, up 21 percent from the previous year, according to Reston, Virginia, comScore Inc. data monitoring Gmail still trails Microsoft's Windows Live Hotmail users 361,700,000 Yahoo and 273100000. Both of the services recorded declines of visitors in September the same period last year.

With Facebook's new product, users can send messages to friends who appear as text messages from mobile phones, emails or instant messages, based on the preferences that were set for each friend. Previously, users could receive alerts in your e-mail when it was published a photo or friends commented on his Facebook wall.

Best Filter

Facebook users can now drop Microsoft Office documents to your messages in the network, Microsoft said in a blog today.

Facebook, the world's largest social networking services, you may be able to filter spam better than other rivals in the data webmail friend, Danny Sullivan, who runs the Web site Search Engine Land, said in an interview.

"The idea of a white list of people who are just friends with you - it sounds very good," said Sullivan. "This could put pressure on Google" to improve its system of classification of messages that are important to users.

Yahoo last month took steps to make their service more attractive to Web users love social networking. There was a version that integrates e-mail messages and the microblogging site Twitter Inc. provides information at faster speeds. The service, still in a testing phase, also improves search, spam protection and viewing photos.

AOL Inc., the market leader in one-time email, preview changes to your web mail yesterday. New features allow users to view images, maps and other accessories contained in a message on a panel at the side of the screen. AOL was fifth on the website of e-mail in September with 30.7 million users, a decline of 18 percent over the previous year.

"Email remains one of the killer apps on the internet," said Brad Garlinghouse, senior vice president of AOL's consumer products that ran through Yahoo e-mail until you go to AOL last year. "We recognize we are not only in the business of e-mail, we are in the business of communication."