Facebook to launch e-mail service

Facebook is set to announce a new e-mail feature on Monday that could challenge Gmail, Yahoo mail and Hotmail as the most popular online e-mail services, according to news reports on Friday.

The service by the popular social networking company will for the first time allow the site’s 500 million members to use “@facebook.com” addresses and will also be integrated with Microsoft’s recently introduced Office online services.

The tech news blog TechCrunch, which first reported the development, said the Facebook service would be a full-featured e-mail client.

“Facebook is completely rewriting their messaging product and is preparing to launch a fully featured webmail product in its place, according to a source with knowledge of the product,” TechCrunch wrote.

The development comes amid growing rivalry between Facebook and Google, which this week raised salaries across the board to pre-empt defections to the social network site. Google also recently cut off Facebook’s access to its own e-mail product to prevent Facebook from importing Gmail address books until Facebook allows Google to access data on its site.