I am doubtless a sad geek for saying this, but one of the innovations of the past decades that I love most is Caller Line Indentity - the technology that allows phones to display the number of the person who is calling. I still enjoy freaking out some of my older friends by answering with their name when they call, but what I love most is the way that I can screen my calls and decide whether or not I want to speak to someone. And when callers withhold their number I rarely take the call because I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a junk call.

It’s really the ultimate permission-based system. I decide which calls I want to take, and those decisions are not at all consistent - don’t tell anyone, but there definitely have been times when I’ve ignored a call from a friend who I knew I just didn't have time to speak to if they rang at a bad moment.

I’m sure that there are some people - be they friends, work contacts or telemarketers - who get angry that I won’t take their calls. I might represent a missed opportunity for a fundraiser to make their target, or I might be missing out on whatever latest upgrade my phone company is trying to sell me - but to be honest, I don’t care. I want to have control over my incoming communications and above all, I want to pick and choose who I speak to.

So I was personally quite excited by Facebook’s recent announcement that they are launching an email system that will be prioritized for communication between "friends", while users will be able to control what "other" messages (i.e. newsletters, promotional opt-ins, etc.) they want designated to their main inbox folder. For one, I will be able to ensure that I’m only receiving email messages from people I know. And the integration of a mechanism for sending long messages to people outside my network that they don’t have to reply to in real time - i.e. email - into the mix of ways I can already communicate using Facebook is very appealing.

You may, of course, think this is a rather strange attitude for an email marketer to be taking. I’ve heard people saying that if Facebook gets its way then the email marketing business will be destroyed because we'll no longer be able to email people whenever we want to, even if they ticked a box to say they would like to hear from us.

But I think anything that underlines email’s original purpose in life - as a means of sending messages from one human to another - can only be a good thing. We don’t want it to go the way of the postal service where it now seems hardly worth checking the mailbox because you know it’s only going to be filled with bills or marketing material.

While we don’t yet know the full details of Facebook’s innovations, I can’t wait to hear more and to start tweaking my settings to take advantage of them. At the moment I can’t imagine a day when I won’t be using email, but I’m also open to the suggestion that it might yet happen!