Many of us have come to depend on Facebook for daily entertainment, connecting with old friends, or communication to pass the time. Since it’s launch in early 2004, the site has evolved from a small, relatively exclusive site with an emphasis placed on what individuals put out there for others to see. As time went on and poking (thankfully) fell out of fashion, the way we communicated with each other on Facebook changed drastically. We started with messages, sent directly and privately from sender to recipient. When the wall was launched, most folks took their conversations public, but those conversations always ran the risk of being deleted by others who wanted to claim more space on the page. Anyone else remember those early day free-for-alls? Oh, how things have changed.

In April of 2008, real-time chat was introduced to the site, supporting other popular instant messaging clients, joining features like Wall-to-Wall, Like, Pages, and Gifts. As Facebook’s functionality grew, so did its list of problems. Users constantly fought layout changes, legal issues popped up all over, privacy became a point of contention, and even foreign governments found bones to pick with the site. But there’s one piece that it seems everyone gets frustrated over: the blocking of the Facebook site.

Employers and schools began to block the site to ensure individuals weren’t sacrificing productivity for a bit of entertainment, but employees and students alike have expressed their outrage. Particularly because of the degree of communication options available through Facebook, many individuals feel that taking away Facebook is almost like taking away their phone or their email access. But last week, Facebook announced that these restrictions may be coming to a close.

Facebook users all receive emails notifying them of recent activity on their account, such as wall posts from friends, comments on photos, or messages, unless they have changed their account settings to turn off this option. While these emails have always showed users the text that had been posted on their profile and linked to the page, last week Facebook added an additional line in those emails—New Feature: Reply to this email to comment on this link. Suddenly, Facebook has broken through the site restrictions and brought its functionality to any users email.

Most users seem to be excited by this opportunity, but it marks a decided change for advertisers on Facebook. While most users will still log on to Facebook at some point to take part in the many opportunities present on the site such as photos and videos, browsing, status updates, applications and more, third-party advertisers have a new challenge for reaching individuals who can participate in conversations without ever logging on. Fan pages won’t get the same traffic, page suggestions will go unnoticed, discussion boards will be even further ignored than presently, and branded gifts will lose their prime checkout lane presence in their consumer’s Facebook real estate.

Facebook is providing their users with a functionality they’ll appreciate, and with the projected $710 million revenue for the site in 2010, they can’t be too concerned with the new challenges for advertisers. However, the fight for attention just got a little bit harder. What opportunities can we leverage with these changes—email marketing, contextual ads for email clients? How will your business overcome this new challenge?

Claire Grinton is a brand strategist and writer based in San Francisco. Find more from Claire or contact her at claire[dot]grinton[at]gmail.

Tags: community, conversation, Facebook, Marketing, Social Media