Facebook's "Gmail Killer" To Have Microsoft Office Web Apps Integration?

More leaks about Facebook's supposed "Project Titan" rival to Gmail – which has been tipped for a Monday reveal – are emerging, with whispers that Microsoft are actually involved as well. According to ZDNet's source, Facebook will integrate its new webmail service with Office Web Apps, Microsoft's online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote; "the Office team has been working on this for a while now" says the tipster.

While some have criticized the idea of trusting Facebook with more personal data, the general movement of the industry does seem to be heading in that direction. A new Gartner study estimates that by 2014, 20-percent of employees will use social networks as their business communications' hub.

"The rigid distinction between e-mail and social networks will erode," says Gartner research VP Monica Basso, and that "e-mail will take on many social attributes, such as contact brokering, while social networks will develop richer e-mail capabilities." They also predict that, by the end of 2012, 10-percent of email accounts will be on cloud-based services.