Two interesting pieces about the rise of social networking vs. the use of email.
The Wall Street Journal published the following article about why eMail No Longer Rules. Jessica E. Vascellaro presents a very good description of the rise of Facebook, Twitter, and other site and concludes with the following.
"People were very dependent on email. They overused it," he says. "Now, people can use the right tool for the right task." "Perhaps. But there's another way to think about all this. You can argue that because we have more ways to send more messages, we spend more time doing it. That may make us more productive, but it may not. We get lured into wasting time, telling our bosses we are looking into something, instead of just doing it, for example. And we will no doubt waste time communicating stuff that isn't meaningful, maybe at the expense of more meaningful communication. Such as, say, talking to somebody in person."
Chris Crum posts the 10 reasons he believes that eMail will not disappear anytime soon. I agree. Do you?
Reasons Email Isn't Going Away Anytime Soon
1. People still send hand-written letters via snail mail, even though they could instead make a phone call, send an email, text message, or status update.
2. Nearly all sites on the web that require registration require an email address. Some are starting to integrate social media into this process (through things like Facebook Connect), but that is still a very small fraction, and they typically still allow for email information as well.
3. Email notifies you of updates from all social networks you are a part of (provided your settings are set up that way).
4. We haven't seen any evidence yet that Google Wave really is the next big thing and will catch on on a large scale.
5. Email is universal, and social networks are not. Nearly everybody on the web (while there are no doubt some exceptions) has an email address. Many places of employment give employees email addresses when they begin working there. Meanwhile, a great deal of them are banning workers from even accessing social networks.
6. There are plenty of people who have no interest in joining social networks.Frequent news stories about security, privacy, and reputation issues do not help convince them.
7. Email is still improving. It hasn't screeched to a halt with the rise of social media. There is still innovation going on, and integration with social media. Look at how Google is constantly adding new features to Gmail. Look at the new Yahoo Mail.
8. Even social networks themselves recognize the importance of email. Never mind that they update users about community-driven happenings via email. MySpace (still one of the biggest social networks) even launched its own email service recently.
9. More social media use means more email use. Look at these recent findings from Nielsen. The people consuming the largest amount of social media are also the people consuming the largest amount of email.
10. As far as marketing is concerned, email is doing pretty well, as many companies continue tostruggle to find the right social media strategy to suit their needs.
