Let’s clear up the confusion about Facebook email changes, which seem to make everyone’s default mail a @Facebook.com email address.

Lifehacker does a good job explaining how to change it back, or make it private, and Forbes blogger Kashmir Hill called Facebook’s move a “lame attempt to force its email service on you.”

According to Facebook’s help

By default, anyone on Facebook can send you a message, and anyone outside of Facebook can email you at your “username@facebook.com.” Messages and email all go to your Facebook Messages.
To edit who can message you, simply:
1. Click the account menu  at the top right of any Facebook page and choose Privacy Settings.
2. Next to the How You Connect heading, click Edit Settings.
3. Select your preference from the dropdown menu next to Who can send you Facebook messages?

My friend Dean Collins did a quick test and found that I got his mail, but he and I are connected on Facebook. So, assuming he used an email associated with his account, it is not unusual that this would work.

For the real testing, Christopher Penn at email provider What Counts did a test of deliverability of Facebook.com email addresses.
He provides a great visual/chart to help you out. His conclusion:

Clearly, Facebook has some very odd, inconsistent rules when filtering email, and unlike other mail server systems, it doesn’t seem to return any messages when things do or don’t bounce.

He also gives advice to marketers that Facebook.com email addresses aren’t optimal – perhaps a benefit to consumers who don’t want to be bothered. Marketers may see more of these, and have no insight on their deliverability. Definitely a downside for consumers who ask for and want information.

If you think that you should be receiving a message on Facebook and it is not showing in your regular message box, don’t forget about the “Other” box where those ‘suspect’ messages go.

So Facebook’s IPO didn’t work out the way everyone dreamed – unless you dreamed about a downward trending line. Do I think it was priced right, or that people are over reacting? Doesn’t matter – don’t take stock tips from me.

What I can tell you is that Facebook still is the largest social network on the planet with over 900 million monthly users, almost 400 million of whom logged on at least six out of the last seven days (as of March 2012.) People use Facebook in 70 languages, and over 300 million photos are uploaded daily. 3.2 billion “likes” happened in the first quarter of this year. You may read that they’re not as popular with the younger kids or that they don’t have room to grow. I call shenanigans. There’s still a lot of life in this puppy.
Is Facebook perfect? No. There are lots of things I’d change if I were Zuck. But what’s important for my clients and friends to understand is that Facebook has become infractructure on the Internet. People use their Facebook IDs to comment on other websites, login to other sites, and share from other sites back to Facebook. If Google is a ‘database of intentions,’ tracking people’s searches to derive what they’re going to do or hoping to do, Facebook is becoming a ‘database of actions.‘

We went to this specific restaurant and we liked it. We took this photo here, at this location, showing that we didn’t just search for this place – we found it, enjoyed it, and shared it.
If you’re a small business, you might enjoy my recent column about a series of webinars from Facebook’s Small Business Team on how to use their ads more effectively. They’re obviously trying to make the platform easier to understand for the lower-spending but more plentiful small businesses of the world – so take advantage of it and learn more about how to make your home page more effective, target your audience, and more. Contact me if I can be helpful in this regard.