Monday, June 25, 2012

Dear Mark@facebook.com

When you have a brand and an outreach like Facebook, you can do anything you want, but why would you want to do it a ham-handed way?  Kashmir Hill at Forbes was one of the first to pick up on the latest case, calling it "Facebook's lame attempt to force its email service on you."

Technolog on MSNBC explains what happened and what you can do about it:

You see, what happened is that the email address — or in some cases, addresses — displayed on your Facebook profile was changed from whatever it was to your Facebook email address. (Your Facebook email address consists of whatever is at the end of your Facebook URL slapped in front of @facebook.com. For example: My Facebook URL is http://facebook.com/rosa, so my Facebook email address is rosa@facebook.com.)

For most people, this is pretty darn annoying as all the mail they receive at the Facebook email address winds up in their regular Facebook inbox. Based on a quick survey of friends and colleagues, it seems that this is inconvenient to a majority, as they prefer to receive their email in ... you know, their actual email inboxes.

Now that you understand the somewhat bad news better, here are two good pieces of news: Facebook didn't alter the default address on your account, meaning that the social network's whacky system only altered what is visible on your profile. And you can change your profile back to normal pretty easily.

All you have to do is open up your profile page (hit the "About" button under your personal info), scroll down to the "Contact Info" box, and hit the "Edit" button. There you can toggle who can see which email address and whether it is displayed on your Timeline or not.
 
If you're not a fan of receiving your email in your Facebook inbox, I suggest hiding that address and simply making the one you favor visible.

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