Facebook email launching on Monday?

Friday 12 November

Facebook's cryptically suggestive email invitation

Hot on the heels of announcing new iPhone and Android apps, Facebook is now being strongly tipped to finally unveil Project Titan next week – the company’s long-rumoured email client.

The social network has sent out invitations to US journalists inviting them to an exclusive press event in San Francisco on Monday at the location of the Web 2.0 Summit, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to talk the following day.

And while there’s no explicit confirmation of what the event is for, the use of artwork that makes the invite look like an envelope, along with the presence of the icons for Facebook’s current messaging service, seems to be an awfully big hint.

Either way, it seems like something fairly major is on the cards. At last week’s mobile announcement, the company hinted that there were other big changes on the way, dropping the classic line “watch this space”.

A move to launch a full-blown email client would also place further context on the sudden flaring of bad blood between Facebook and current webmail king Google. The latter has cut Facebook’s direct access to users’ Gmail contacts lists, saying it wasn’t prepared to play open cards with a company that wasn’t willing to return the favour.