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Social Networking on the Rise as Bell Tolls for E-Mail
As the death-knell of e-mail begins to toll, many Web trackers have been inspired to explore the ramifications for the future of cyber communication. Two years ago, surveys revealed that many teens believed e-mail to be an aging Web dinosaur, as 80-percent of those polled had already turned their attention to social networking.According to the Wall Street Journal, the rest of the world is following the lead of those prescient trendsetters. More people overall (301.5 million) now actively use sites like Facebook and Twitter than do e-mail services (276.9 million), a shift that could primarily be attributed to the immediacy of social networking. Status updates, along with profile pages packed full of information and photos, have basically rendered mundane e-mails obsolete. No one needs to ask a question in an e-mail if the answer has already been tweeted.
The fall of e-mail may not necessarily be a good thing, though, as people could wind up foregoing detailed interactions with specific friends in lieu of generic, impersonal social networking exchanges. This will certainly be a culturally and socially significant trend to follow, so let us know your stance. To e-mail or to tweet? That is the 21st century question. [From: The Wall Street Journal]
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Comments
5
Subscribe to commentstimOct 14th 2009 7:26AM
Possibly one of the stupidest things I ever read.
Sure, the likes of Facebook and Twitter are impacting on some of the social messaging that might once have taken place by email, but that doesn't mean email's going to go anywhere. Email still has a unique place in most people's internet experience - it's the unique identifier that you use to sign up and get notifications from most of these services for example. It's also a generic technology - unlike social networks, nobody's going to pull the plug on email if the numbers are down, because nobody can - email doesn't have shareholders, and there's no Zuckerberg figure trying to make money out of it.
More than all that, business needs email, and no business is going to trust that traffic to a social network. Facebook can't kill email any more than the phone killed the post, or indeed email killed the post or the phone for that matter - there's a place for all these things. Just try sending a package by Twitter.
MikeOct 14th 2009 11:29AM
I completely agree with this tim. Stating that the "death-knell of e-mail begins to toll" seems to have been written only to attract readers.
Email is an absolute necessity these days: postage/payment confirmations, website sign-up details, banking, CV requests. I'd rather keep things private than posted to my now long-deactivated Facebook profile.
mslalagirlOct 16th 2009 12:11AM
I agree emails are more personal than social networking. Myself will always have an emai addressl it is so convenient.
steveOct 16th 2009 11:50AM
The author, and apparently the WSJ, left out the impact - and in several ways the greater "immediacy" - allowed by text messaging.
Tom O'LearyOct 16th 2009 1:22PM
The subject of this post is a bit misleading. Young people are, without a doubt, using social media and mobile phones more for connecting to their friends, but email is still the go-to app for business and private communication. More importantly, email continues to dominate ROI with modest estimates at $47 per dollar spent. It is also easy to track.
Also, the stats for email users worldwide is completely off. "More people overall (301.5 million) now actively use sites like Facebook and Twitter than do e-mail services (276.9 million)"
In 2007, there were over 727 million business email users alone worldwide, and Ferris Research predicts that the number will grow to just under one billion by 2010.
See my post below
Generation Y Email?
http://www.messagingtimes.com/2007/07/27/generation-y-email/
Social networking and MMS communication are definitely the go-to apps for many in social circles. But for business and private communication, email is still 'the killer app'.
But sure, email has been pronounced 'dead' many times. Not too long ago, when RSS was touted as it's replacement. Email is dead. Long live email.