Some people would see it as cool to have a @facebook.com email address, but not when they were never told about the change once it is implemented, and they Facebook decide to change that to your Primary Email Address without even telling you.

Now, a lot of users are sure they didn’t even hear a thing about this email change, but I saw it featured in the Tech News a lot. Although I did not see it on facebook itself, so perhaps they never really said anything about it. Also, I am from the UK and my email is still showing as my original primary address, my Gmail one. The Facebook one is listed, and seems to only be used for sending messages over. This means if an email message is sent to my username@facebook.com, the email will go directly to my Messages.

I looked into this personally and figured it must be because this is affecting US accounts only, and not yet reached the UK, so when I saw the BBC article regarding this story and they showed a screenshot of the change within a BBC account, clearly a UK account, this caused me to become a little confused.

Facebook has made it clear that the use of a Facebook email is completely up to us. Some users are also worried about the phishing attacks which may come from this, with users signing up to facebook with emails such as facebook_tech@facebook.com etc to trick users into sending over personal details, however we believe that Facebook has plans in place to defend against this kind of activity. Well, let’s hope so anyway.

Perosnally, I feel this is a way of Facebook trying to compete with Google. Google+ is linked with a Google account, which uses a Gmail email, so it’s the same as having a @google.com email kind of, in the way that the account links in with everything Google related. Facebook appears to be heading down the same route. Perhaps they are a little afraid of Google+ being competition in the near future with their dedicated 100 million+ users waiting patiently.

One other thing that confuses me is what the BBC has said in it’s article.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18590929

Messages posted to the rival social network Twitter suggested the move had annoyed some users.

I really don’t think twitter is a rival of Facebook. They work in different ways. Twitter is like Micro Blogging ,with status updates, and there are many links between the two social sites that allow information being posted on one site to be posted on the other. Something that is lacking with Google+ for obvious reasons from Facebook. However, there are links with Twitter with Google+ too. I guess being Piggy in the middle isn’t a bad thing when you are enjoying the users of both the largest Social networking giants on the planet.

Apart from that, the BBC article is spot on.

UPDATE: The email address changed in my profile, but it has not changed in settings. People have claimed it became their “primary email”, which is not the case with myself.