At a press conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the new system called 'Messages' was created in response to the more than 4 billion messages currently sent via Facebook, on a daily basis. The new system will resemble 'chat' but everyone will also be given facebook.com email addresses, which in some cases will be the persons first email address considering that there is a very high number of people who have signed up to Facebook using a cell phone. The new system is split into 3 parts:

Seamless Messaging - This is where the user gets to decide how they would like to communicate, via sms, chat, email or Messages. The recipient will receive the message in whatever format they stipulate is the best for them, with the conversation taking place in real-time. Message sending will also be simplified by axing CC, BCC and a Title – you will just be able to send a message by pressing 'Enter' – making communication less formal and more streamline.

Cross-Platform Conversation History – Messages is primarily built for communicating with friends which means that conversations will be assimilated specific people, and not the medium which they choose to interact on, offering different services off of one platform.

Social Inbox – This inbox will only contain messages from friends and their friends and others which you specifically select to appear in this folder. All others will be put into another folder or bounced, depending on what you stipulate the setting to be. Your messages will also be ranked in order of importance, based on the people you interact with the most on Facebook.

All of this is still being introduced to Facebook and as usual there are nay sayers around every corner. I'm going to withhold my judgment until I've used Messages for myself and seen what it can do in terms of saving me time and effort when communicating with everyone in my social circle.