In a blog post today, MailRank announced that its founders would be moving to Facebook in December. Is Facebook trying to revamp last year’s failed email experiment? For now, the answer is no. Facebook is not acquiring any technology or other assets from MailRank. We reached out to a Facebook spokesperson who confirmed that this announcement only has to do with the actual hiring of MailRank co-founders.
Last year Facebook tried to get into the email game. Its Project Titan was dubbed a “Gmail killer” and gave users @facebook.com email addresses. Zuckerberg claimed that it wasn’t really about email but still, users didn’t bite.
Just last month, email turned 40. Yet we’ve all seen those “end of email era” type articles floating around the web, like this one, circa 2009.
As of right now, Bryan and Bethanye will discontinue the private beta of MailRank for Outlook to focus on their new jobs at Facebook.
But one thing’s for sure: People send 294 billion emails every day. And that’s a heckuva lot of data.
