To go on the record: I hate messages that aren’t email (I don’t really love email, but at least it’s standardized). Facebook messages, twitter DM’s, Linkedin messages and a host of other isolated systemic proprietary messages are perpetual pricks in my side as I attempt to stay connected and informed.  Why you ask?  Because each of those sites (except twitter) makes me use their interface to reply.  Which I understand drives their page views and impressions and helps drive their revenues and/or valuations, but leaves me in a lurch when I read the message you send me on facebook in my email and then I neglect to jump over to facebook.com and write you back, thus killing the exchange.

Not to mention, like most of you I’ve got a lot of these accounts hiding out, and I’d like them all to be connected.  You know, so that when someone sends me a facebook message I can find that in my giant file called “Archive” in Gmail as well as the reply I sent them back when I search for communications from them.  So like Michael Arrington called for an imap for our facebook inbox I’d appreciate that type of interconnectivity between my email and my facebook.

But recently I had an epiphany. (Well at least call it a moment of enlightenment) – Facebook is that giant folder, at least for my address book.  Let’s take the following scenario.  I want to email connect with a friend from college.

Pre-my enlightenment I’d look him up in my address book and see what the address I had for him was.  Maybe if I was lucky he’d be on Plaxo and would be updated.  If not, I’d then resort to polling friends and trying to see who had his info.

Post-my enlightenment I just hop onto facebook and shoot him a message.  I don’t need his email (though facebook would have that too) because we’re both on facebook.

Truthfully, I’d still like to have his updated email in my address book and not stuck in facebook – but for now, I’ll take access to him over no access.

What about you?