How To Email Anyone with a Facebook Profile

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facebook_email

[Edited: The below no longer works but you will find some other interesting content here on the blog – for example, Facebook Photo Discoveries.]

Some recruiters message potential candidates on Facebook and find success in that. Perhaps it depends on the location and the type of a job, whether this would be seen as a good channel to strike a conversation on the receiving side; but it has never appealed to me. My own perception is that Facebook is a place for friends and not as much for business, with the exception of some business-related groups, pages, and some professional connections who are also friends.

As an additional barrier, for non-friends the message will go to their Other folder and will probably be never seen. You may have the option of paying to send messages to the inbox instead, but this option is not always available.

Due to the recent changes to the Facebook emailing system, there is now a way to email (pretty much) everyone on Facebook. There’s no sure way to find the email address, registered with Facebook by a given user, but there’s a way to send him/her an email.

It goes without saying that spamming is not cool; messages should be sent with respect and consideration. What seems attractive in the new way of emailing is that the business-related message lands in the person’s email (and not anywhere on Facebook).

Sending an email to (almost any) Facebook user is pretty straightforward.

How to Find a Facebook User’s @facebook.com Email Address

When you look at a user’s profile, it will either have a custom URL

martin-lee-facebook

– in which case the email is going to be <the-custom-part>@ facebook.com (for the example above it’s mrmartinle @ facebook.com) –

or, in case the custom URL was never set, it will look like this:

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id= <ID here>

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– in which case the email is going to be <ID>@ facebook.com (for the example above it’s [email protected]).

How to Send an Email to a Facebook User

You simply send it to the @facebook address and it’s forwarded to the email address that is registered with the account. That’s it!

Please note: this technique seems to not work well when you use MS Outlook. Use another email client or use gmail, and you are in business.

The first time when that forwarding happens, the user will also receive a reminder about the @facebook email.

The @facebook email can be disabled in the preferences, in which case this technique will not work, but I imagine that very few people will do that. The majority of users never touch their default preferences.

Please note: this technique seems to not work well when you use Outlook. Use another email client or use gmail.

Comments 7

  1. This is a great tip Irina! I’ve tested it quite a bit today and it worked perfectly most of the time, but it didn’t work for a few of the profiles. Mail Tester recognises them as actual email addresses, so I’m not sure why they’d be bouncing back. Any ideas?

  2. I may have answered my own question… It may have been our server that was causing the issue. I tried it from a personal account and it worked every time. Thanks!

  3. Not sure if this works anymore either.
    I followed the directions above, but the intended email bounced back immediately.
    So, I added a hack of my own, and changed @facebook to @meta.com, since y’know, they changed their name.
    Those emails were sent, but disappeared into cyberspace. Not sure what happened to them. Maybe they will come back someday, or arrive at intended destination. Who knows.

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