Facebook Messages - Ripple Time

Facebook announced another new service last week, Messages - endowing Facebook users with a brand new facebook.com e-mail address that Facebook hopes you will use for... well, everything.  Kind of a messaging integrator and aggregator.

But there is a bigger, far more significant Ripple here, and I'm not talking about my relaxation beverage of choice while using Facebook.

And that Ripple is AUTHENTICATION.  E-mail attached to a Facebook account is authenticated.  It's YOU.  No (theoretically) spoofing.

And that, not aggregation, is what is truly missing from today's messaging.  And authentication is what will symbolize its next major evolution.