You may or may not realize that you have a Facebook email address. It’s an @facebook.com address you can use to correspond with people on external email accounts from your Facebook inbox. Though it was called a “Gmail killer” when it first came out in 2010, it seems instead to have been D.O.A. As far as I can tell, no one really uses it. No one seems to want the Facebook inbox to be their main email account (with good reason). Facebook is trying to change that with a new little nudge. On your profile page, Facebook has taken the liberty of making your Facebook email your default contact address. (See right, and check your own profile.)
For me, this contact email was previously either my Forbes account or my Gmail account — both of which I prefer to be emailed at. While I appreciate Facebook as a “White Pages” that allows me to reach out to just about anyone, I’m not a fan of the social network’s screwy messaging system and the way it auto-sorts your email for you, putting emails from ‘strangers’ in a shadow inbox that’s easy to miss. As a result, I barely check my Facebook inbox.
Whether you opted for one or not, you do have a Facebook email address. If you have created a Facebook vanity url (such as “https://www.facebook.com/kashmir.hill“) then your FB email address is that vain phrase at the end plus @Facebook.com. If you haven’t customized your Facebook url, then your email address consists of the random number Facebook has assigned to your profile — which makes for a pretty lame email account. (See right.)
Facebook's Lame Attempt To Force Its Email Service On You
