The Death of Email (yay!)

Jul 18, 2009

With the rising popularity of Instant messenger, Twitter-style status updates in social networks and other alternate forms of online communication, it is not surprising to see the continued decline of email usage among younger Internet users.

I first came across the trend about 3 years ago or so at Ola Ahlvarsson’s SIME conference in Sweden, where he cleverly had a panel of young people interviewed about their online habits. (The panel’s premise being that Internet usage is becoming increasingly segmented in style. A venture capitalist looking to invest in an Internet start-up can no longer assess it personally in terms of “I think I’d use that”. This is especially true of a VC older than 30 years old.)

On that SIME panel one of the students explained that email was so passe that he only used emails when communicating with authority figures, such as teachers or parents. Otherwise, the proliferation of new communication channels were the place to get in touch with friends. I got a similar response from a university student who attended a Blogger meet up in Malaysia two weeks ago.

To the older crowd (25+ years old) email remains popular, but the number of new channels is still growing. Twitter, status updates, IM and – soon – Google Wave. While the proliferation of new channels may annoy and depress some (“I have to sign up for ANOTHER service??!!”), I find it an exciting place to be.

We are now learning to communicate in ways that previous generations could not. Great time to be alive!

Discussion

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View Comments for “The Death of Email (yay!)”

Soenke

I agree with Julius. While email is blooded today, it's spirit is the right way. You guys like to use twitter, google, facebook as e-mail substitution but you also seem to don't care about your privacy and data security.

Take a look at google wave protocol. This should and I guess it will become the new e-mail. a powerful sponsor, openness, standards (xmpp), secure (tls) and a built-in (server-)network of trust (what people would like to see in SMTP and therefore inventing things like AMTP that probably never will see the public light).

So be careful with wishing email a fast dead.
Dario Salvelli

I think that email remain the 1st social network. Facebook Inbox is only email 2.0.
Julius Beezer

I don't know why the death of email is to be celebrated.

Firstly, it's an open standard, which means you own your data, not some proprietary corporation that will doubtless gouge you for access in future.

Secondly, it remains nice to use, intuitive, asynchronous, fast, reliable. There're good reasons why it's so popular.

Young people may prefer evanescent chatter, but we grownups are more serious about keeping our word, and our words. The youth'll learn. In the meantime, the big corps can exploit them, same as it ever was.