When iOS 5 ships this fall with iMessage support, it could revolutionize the way we look at text messaging, from the de facto way of quickly pinging a person on our phones to an expensive way we reach out to our friends who inexplicably don’t have iPhones.
But could iMessage have a big competitor in Facebook? It’s increasingly looking like it, as inside sources inside Facebook are now claiming that the social networking giant are working on integrating free text messaging to any number into Facebook chat.
According to a report from iPhone Italia, Facebook will expand its messaging platform by allowing users to text from directly within Facebook chat.
The killer feature here seems to be that it will work not only to Facebook friends, but even to people who aren’t signed up for Facebook.
The only real problem here seems to be that these messages will be sent from Facebook’s number, not your own number, but apparently, return texts will pop up just fine within Facebook’s messaging system.
This seems pretty killer to me… the kind of thing that might give iMessage a run for its money. Facebook’s already separated Messaging into its own dedicated iOS app… if it can send texts to non-Facebook members on top of what it already does, I’m not sure what there is to recommend iMessage anymore.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
