It struck me today – when I received the first personal email in over a month that all of my personal communication was happening via my work email, Facebook and on my mobile (Via chat and SMS).
In fact I haven’t written a personal email in months from my hotmail account. Maybe I’m late catching on to this idea – I’ve read the reviews about how the demographic is different on Facebook than MySpace, how long people are spending on social networking sites, the effect these sites are having on the English language in general etc etc…
But personal email is being killed – mine only fills up with notifications from Bebo, Facebook, Linked In and marketing newsletters. So why have one anymore? I’m already being marketed to on Facebook…
The ironic thing is that to sign up to Facebook you have to have an email address – but if they are becoming redundant – why are they mandatory. Why are Facebook and Myspace insisting on them at registration? They can market to users in their own space. Why isn’t a mobile number sufficient?
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying, it’s the death of email in general. I still use my work one all the time – and couldn’t work without email – but for me its only a matter of time before I have a work network to communicate with my clients and suppliers on – reducing the dependency on email.
I’d love to know other people’s views on this? Do other people still use their Hotmail, Google mail or whatever personal email client they have anymore?
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I still use my email, but the most frequent thing I look at is posts on my blog. When I see I have a new comment, I delete the email and go read it on the blog. In that way, the email is almost getting in the way. For this, along with Facebook and other services, it would be easier to just have a notification program, instead of a full fledged email.
And I think you are right, in that facebook could easily replace email. My inbox there stays devoid of spam, and I can communicate easily with people I know.
Hi J David
Thanks for the comments – I think your points are very valid indeed. I have just seen an article that you might find interesting
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_impact_of_facebooks_platform.php