Facebook made yet another big announcement today. The company introduced a new communications systems aimed at enhancing digital dialogue between friends and family. It isn't yet live, but you can request to be an early user of the new system here.  To get a sense of what Facebook's new messaging platform is about, check out its official 4-minute video at the end of this blog post.

Since it involves a new Facebook.com email address, some people shrugged the new functionality off as a weak email tool.  They're right — but that's like complaining an apple makes a poor orange.  The new platform is a poor email client because it isn't intended to be an email client. Instead, this is a new form of communications; as Mark Zuckerberg said (more than once) "This isn't email," and he's right.  Here's why it's worth paying attention to the new Facebook messaging platform:

• It's a Gmail wounder.  There's been a lot of buzz about Facebook's messaging platform being a "Gmail killer." It isn't, but it's certainly going to wound Gmail and other popular email clients. With the combination of individuals’ social graphs and Facebook’s new functionality, Facebook will succeed at pulling away some time and attention from Gmail, but it won't kill Gmail or other email clients. Facebook isn’t interested in being a management or response tool for your flood of bills, email newsletters or other communications; instead, it’s about facilitating and enhancing your personal relationships.  Facebook wants to be the platform for personal communications and leave the boring stuff to Gmail and others. 
   

Forrester is looking toward 2011 and considering how social media will continue to change marketing.  We’d love to involve you in that discussion.  Join us in The Forrester Community For Interactive Marketing Professionals as we and other interactive marketers discuss and debate the hot new predictions for 2011.  

We’ve launched four specific areas of focus (although you can always suggest more).  Will 2011 be . . .

• The year location-based services go mainstream?  Thus far, checking in from real-world locations has been an activity reserved for early adopters, but this behavior is growing, being spurred on by innovation from foursquare and Facebook.  Will this be the “hockey stick” year for foursquare, where growth kicks into hyperdrive? Or will Facebook roll over foursquare as it did MySpace? And what will it take to hook the masses in the check-in craze?
   
• The year of trust?  Trust has always been an important brand attribute, but in 2011 it will become crucial for brands to earn followers, affinity and advocacy.  How will brands earn trust in social media channels?  How will trust be measured?  What happens to brands that lose on trust?  What steps will Facebook take to earn more trust as the social network continues to integrate itself into consumers’ surfing, social and mobile habits?
   

In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of US-based companies entering or planning to enter into the Mexican market. For example, Best Buy has rolled out an aggressive plan to invest $400 million to open 20 stores in Mexico over a three-year period. Lowe’s announced earlier this year that it spent roughly $40 million to open two stores in Monterrey, Mexico. And Target is setting its sights on expanding into Mexico, with goals to enter into the market no later than 2013.

Without question, there are many challenges with entering into a new market, such as understanding the country and cultural norms that influence shopping habits, determining how to transfer and modify successful strategies of a winning brand in one country to another, and understanding what the current size of the new market is as well as its growth potential. However, despite these hurdles, my colleague Tamara Barber and I contend that US-based retailers can use the factors that influenced the growth of the US Hispanic eCommerce market as a guide for developing effective growth strategies in Mexico.

There's a big announcement coming from Facebook on Monday. It is rumored that Facebook will unveil a new email and messaging platform, although the announcement could also or alternatively relate to mobile chat or Skype.  If Facebook tackles email (which seems inevitable, whether next week or next year), it promises to change the way consumers think about digital communications.

If that sounds like a big statement about a company that's already had a profound effect on consumer communications, consider for a moment how the Web changed information gathering. When people needed information prior to the advent of the Internet, the operative question wasn't just "What do I need?" but "How do I get it?"  The "how" affected everything: If I turn to the encyclopedia on my shelf, I might get old information. If I turn to a single source, I might get biased information. If I need to get into my car and drive to a library, it will take a great deal of time and effort. And if the "how" was sufficiently difficult or murky, I might simply give up.

The Internet changed that — it provided a single "how." The browser became our window to whatever data we needed.  Of course, we still needed to find that data on the World Wide Web (which is where Google and other Web 1.0 solutions stepped in), but once "how" turned to "what," it changed everything.  Consumers who saw the benefit of instantaneous access overcame the relatively extreme challenges of early Internet adoption (such as slow speeds, expensive PCs and costly ISPs) and adopted the Web in huge numbers in a relatively short period of time.  That's the power of eliminating "how."