Facebook kills the Other Inbox and launches Message Requests

Facebook is pretty much all about communication, so the existence of the Other Inbox has always seemed a bit weird. Receive a message from someone you don't know, and it will disappear to this message dungeon, most likely never to be seen again. The lack of notifications meant that such messages would tend to go unnoticed for months.

Now Facebook is addressing the problem. The Other Inbox is now dead, replaced by Message Requests. Now if you are contacted by someone you are not already friends with, rather than vanishing into the void, the message will generate an alert on the Messages tab on the web, and in Messenger on mobile devices.

The death of the Other Inbox is not one that will lead to much mourning. Facebook users tended to fall into one of two camps when it came to this communication feature -- those who were irritated by the way it works, and those who simply did not know that it existed. A huge number of people must have missed out on messages due to the fact that anything that ended up in the Other Inbox -- effectively the equivalent of a Spam folder -- would not generate notifications about the arrival of new items.

In its Help Center, Facebook introduces the idea of message requests:

Message requests tell you when someone you might know has sent you a message. You'll see Message Requests at the top of your inbox when you've received one. When you open a message request, you can choose Ignore to hide the conversation, or choose Reply to move the conversation to your inbox.

Messages from friends will go to your inbox and messages we think are spam will be filtered out of your requests.

As noted by TechCrunch, "messages from friends-of-friends will now be treated as request. Facebook will no longer bet that having a friend in common means you care to talk to someone".

In many ways the introduction of Message Requests is something of an affront to privacy. Now it is easier than ever for anyone to get in touch with you. But the flip side of this is that it is now easier to block people you do not want to hear from. Should you receive a message from someone you don’t want to speak to, they will not be notified that you have read their message, and you can safely block them without causing offense or awkwardness.

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