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Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Facebook Apologizes For Confusing Email Switch

Whether you've noticed or not, you have a new primary e-mail address listed as your Facebook contact, and most likely it's an address you've never used.
The social-networking site has quietly replaced your default e-mail addresses such as Gmail and Yahoo! with your @Facebook.com address, an e-mail service option the company launched a few years ago and synced with Timeline in April.

"As we announced back in April, we've been updating addresses on Facebook to make them consistent across our site," a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable. "In addition to everyone receiving an address, we're also rolling out a new setting that gives people the choice to decide which addresses they want to show on their Timelines."

Facebook on Monday apologized to users and admitted that it could have done a better job in explaining and notifying users of changing made to its email display platform. The issue began when Facebook added addresses hosted by Facebook to users’ contact information without first alerting users to the change.

Many users began once against voicing their displeasure with the social media company after their default emails which are often used by friends were removed and replaced with an @facebook.com address. In many cases Facebook competitors such as @gmail and @yahoo accounts were removed.

A representative for Facebook says they did not switch the default email address to promote Facebook’s own platform, although that seems to be what many users rightfully suspected.

According to the Facebook rep:

“We want people to use whatever service is most effective for them.”

Facebook was quick to point out that users can edit their profiles and once again change their @facebook.com addresses back to their default email account, although most users will likely ignore that option.

In April Facebook said it would update email addresses to make contacts more consistent across the social network, although they never gave a timeline for those switches which led to a users Timeline user name syncing to a default Facebook email password.

While Facebook has issued yet another apology for what likely a calculated risk, the company has once again proved that it doesn’t really act all that social when it comes to communication between itself and its users.

CNN contributed to this post.

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