Facebook’s Email Event Kicks Off at 1pm EST: Live Video Here

Update: Facebook’s event is over: Read our explanation of what the new changes to Facebook’s message system are and what they mean to users.

We try not to report speculation as fact in our headlines, so joke’s on us if we’re wrong, but the tech world seems pretty certain that this afternoon’s event from Facebook will include a brand new Facebook email platform — some in the company reportedly consider it a “Gmail killer” — to be hosted either on Facebook.com or Facebook’s recently acquired FB.com domain, which, reports have it, the company is already using internally. Per Microsoft watcher Mary-Jo Foley, the Facebook mail service will be integrated with Microsoft’s Office Web Apps, its “Webified versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote that Microsoft makes available for free to consumers and as paid add-on options for its business users.”

If the reports are true, this could be a Pretty Big Deal. Jason Herskowitz quips that “if Facebook mails isn’t good I’m guessing won’t take long for the “f(M)ail” to emerge as a meme.” But if Facebook email is good (and maybe even if it isn’t), it could lure some of Facebook’s 500 million users away from their current email services and shake up the existing landscape.

We’ll obviously be following this closely. In the mean time, Facebook will be live-streaming the event, and we’ve embedded the video below: