Facebook Email and Messages: Confused How To Use It?

Today, Facebook unveiled a new messaging system that includes an email component called @facebook.com. The system is one more step in the development of the giant "closed social loop" that is Facebook. Now, we have email.

According to the live presentation that just concluded, Facebook messages integrates text, chat, and email into one reportedly seamless affair. In that way, it's much like Gmail (Google Mail) which has a chat and a text component. But the main difference is that you can use the system just for your friend network in Facebook.

Some of the press seems confused regarding "level" of friends, and if people who they don't know can just email them. (That person, from NPR, probably isn't a Facebook user.) What you and that person can do is just set your privacy filter.

Message forwarding? Yes, it's there. You can forward your message to a friend. You can also include a friend in a group conversation.

The question is how do you get to this!

That's the unanswered question. You have to visit a page and ask for an invitation to use it.

You go here: http://www.facebook.com/about/messages/