There are reports coming in that Facebook have sent out beta invitations for a special number of users to trial a Facebook web based email service.  The system has been code names Titan and will allow a full email client when a user accesses their Facebook login.  Being refereed to as the Google Mail Killer, Facebook have a big mountain to climb to claim this victory.

The area of contacts and friends list has been a constant battle field for the two rivals with Google and Facebook pulling punch after punch.  At the beginning of November 2010 Google changed its API service which allowed easier import and export of Google Contacts to third part apps, only if the 3rd part did the same.  As Facebook has a major issue with exporting friends lists this new set up by Google effectively shut the import of GMail contacts into Facebook.  However a work around was put together allowing CSV files to be used and so put Google's back up.

These issue between the two companies started back in 2008 when Facebook put an end to the export of its friends lists and import into Gmail contacts so this recent change has been Google's way of re opening the transfer of contacts.  Google's one priority has been for Facebook to allow access to friends lists via Gmail.

So now Facebook is potentially opening up @Facebook.com email addresses to users who login.  This could be some incorporation of facebook chat or a step development of the internal platform message system.  However we will have to hold our breath until next week when an official announcement will be made.