Facebook’s Seamless Messaging and what should operators do?

Facebook is rolling out seamless messaging which allows people to focus on what they want to communicate and not on how to communicate.  This is again an example of using the social graph to communicate better.

Under the hood Facebook is using Hbase and Hadoop so there is no reason why Telecom operators could not have launched a unified communication system. True the operators don’t have an advanced social networking platform but they can use the user’s mobile social graph as a substitute. If I call you and you call me then we are friends. In the operator’s systems (CRM, HLR, etc.) there is information about who is who. This information is not perfect so operators would need to add a social address book in which users can update their own information and get other people’s updates, much like Plaxo. Adding SMS, instant messaging and email to voice calls, store it in the Cloud and we would have a seamless messaging solution.

The problem is not how hard it would be to implement but why operators are not focusing on this type of solutions. Focus is on market segmentation to find the right tariff plan and device to sell. However operators that want to be around whenever their call and SMS revenues start to seriously decline, will have to do a large mindset change: “Focus on why people want to communicate and not how!”. Find the why and you are likely to come up with alternative hows that are currently not available. A lot of buzz is being generated around Unified Communications Suites but they are the telecom answer to the how not the why. Facebook is definitely shooting in the right direction. Let’s see if operators can do so as well…