Facebook imposes their email addresses

For Facebook users, the social network has changed your contacts email addresses to impose their @facebook.com system.

Facebook is certainly not afraid of controversy, making changes to their system which will surely upset a number of users.

In 2010, Facebook launched their own email system (Facebook Messages), making the @facebook.com email addresses available to users.

Compatible with Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, this email system has the aim of unifying communications by bringing together all messages under this email – Facebook’s instant messaging.

Since then, Facebook Messages hasn’t really been seen until last week, when it was imposed on users without notice.

This was quite a surprise, as the @facebook.com email addresses are now configured by default for the user’s profiles and details. Once again, Facebook is lacking transparency with their users.

To justify this choice, Facebook has declared that they won’t force users onto @facebook.com addresses, but rather that they will have access "to whatever is easiest for them". Facebook goes on to state that this change was announced in April.

This announcement wasn’t very clear though: "from today, we are updating Facebook addresses for better clarity on our site. The addresses that people use to access the site and to send an email an email on Facebook will be the same".

For users who don’t want this change, you simply have to go into your profile page and change the settings (via update my profile).