Facebook has always been expanding to include capabilities and integrations previously unheard of in the social networking circuit. And a huge chunk of its massive growth can be attributed to the acqui-hire business strategy they’ve adopted. Here, the company began acquiring smaller businesses and startups to get access to impressive technologies and the talented people behind them to augment and strengthen its own stable of features.

One of the latest acqui-hire-fueled capabilities the company outed is their @facebook e-mail service. Churned in the rumor mill last year, announced in November and officially rolled out early yesterday, it was developed to provide users with a seamless messaging experience. However, it didn’t quite receive the warm welcome Facebook had hoped it would. Today we take a look at Facebook’s e-mail service, it’s not-so-amusing implementation and suggest a useful tip to remedy it.

At a glance
As mentioned, Facebook intended for its new e-mail service to expand their communications features. It’s part of the company’s previous initiative to invigorate their messaging system, a sound decision given how many people rely on the site for communicating with their contacts.

How does it work?
The e-mail aspect is pretty straightforward: you receive e-mail, and you can send e-mail from within Facebook.com to any e-mail client. But an integral part of this update involves a feature that was previously implemented where chat, private messages, text messages and e-mails are consolidate into a single inbox to make it easier to manage and track them.

What’s my e-mail address?
Your Facebook e-mail address will carry the public username you chose for your profile page.  So if you’re page is at facebook.com/thetenthdoctor then your e-mail address be thetenthdoctor@facebook.com.

Will I be alerted of new e-mails?
You’ll be alerted of new e-mails the same way you’re alerted of new private messages—the word balloon on the upper left side of the page will have a red box indicating the number of unread messages.

What if I don’t want to use it?
Then don’t. But you also can’t delete it, as we’ve tried and merely received an error message. What you can do, on the other hand, is make it invisible from your timeline (more on this later), and maybe even tweak your privacy settings a bit so you won’t receive e-mails through it.

A Rough Start and a Quick Remedy
If you’re looking at your profile page for the first time since the launch, you may notice that whatever e-mail address you’ve specified long ago has been replaced by your Facebook e-mail address. This caused quite an uproar among users. Chalk it up to the company’s habit of forcibly enabling new features on everyone’s profiles without declaring an opt-out option.
To remedy this, you can hide your new @facebook from your Timeline—

• Head on over to your Timeline / profile page and click on “About,” and look for your “Contact Info” and hit Edit.
• From the pop-up menu, click on the circle next to your @facebook address and select “Hidden from Timeline” from the dropdown menu.
• Click on the padlock icon next to the circle and choose “Only Me” to make the e-mail address only visible to you.
• Bring back your missing e-mail addresses by clicking on the circles next to them, and choosing “Shown on Timeline.”
• Hit the Save button.

Tags: Communications, Facebook, social media marketing, social networks