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Facebook thinks email is dying. Classic. How many times have we heard this now? Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg gave a speech at the Nielsen Consumer 360 conference recently, essentially claiming as much.
Do you think email is dying? Comment here.
"In consumer technology, if you want to know what people like us will do tomorrow, you look at what teenagers are doing today, and the latest figures say that only 11% of teenagers email daily. So email (I can’t imagine life without it) is probably going away. So what do teenagers do? They SMS and increasingly they use social networking." (hat tip to WebGuild.org)
First off, Facebook couldn’t exist without email. You need an email address to sign up and to log-in. Many of us rely on email for notifications from Facebook to know when someone has sent us a message, commented on our posts, invited us to an event, tagged us in a photo, etc. In fact, I’d be curious to see how frequently the average Facebook user would come back to Facebook daily without email notifications.
Email lubricates social interactions on Facebook, and I’d be very curious to see how successful Facebook would be without any email integration. I suspect it would die.
To be fair, Sandberg was looking to the future, and not the present when she made this claim. She even said that she couldn’t imagine life without email. It’s interesting, because Facebook is in some ways helping keep email relevant for the reasons mentioned above (though email certainly doesn’t need Facebook’s help to stay relevant).
Facebook requires you to use email to sign-up and log-in, but we are seeing more and more open protocols being used around the web for ID authentication. There are also not-so-open protocols in use, like Facebook Connect. I can log-in to a wide variety of sites/apps with my Facebook ID, but I can’t log-in to Facebook with anything other than my email address. If Facebook thinks email is dying, does that mean it will adopt some other open authentication protocols? Don’t these protocols generally come back to having an email address in the first place anyway?
We’ve written about why social media isn’t killing and will not kill email several times in the past. I don’t want to rehash all of the same points here, so I’ll simply reference a couple of these articles:
- 10 Reasons Social Media isn’t Replacing Email
- Spam Will Not Keep You Away from Email
The popularity of specific social networks comes and goes, but email has been around for a while, and has really shown no signs of going anywhere. Here’s something to consider – how many years has your inbox been flooded with spam? Has it caused you to use email any less? Granted, Facebook does continue to grow, even in the face of massive privacy concerns, but that’s hardly an indication that it could replace email. Sandberg didn’t suggest Facebook itself would replace email, but that SMS and social networking in general would. We’ll see. If Facebook hopes to be a significant part of that replacement on the social networking end, they’re probably going to have to play a little nicer with the open web movement.
I’ll come back to the conclusion we always reach. There is room for both email and social networks. Just like there is now, there will be in the future. As far as marketing is concerned, social networks appear to be greatly enhancing email campaigns. A recent study from GetResponse found that campaigns utilizing these networks were able to increase click-through-rates by 30%.
Do you think email is in any danger of extinction at the hands of social networks and/or SMS? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
This whole “email will soon die off” debate reminds me of around 20-30 years ago when everyone was predicting the paperless office and how printers and paper would soon be a thing of the past.
That clearly hasn’t happened yet and I can’t see email ever going away either, at least not for a very long time.
Some are still pushing for the paperless office thing, but I don’t think paper is going to be obsolete anytime soon either.
With around 5% of the email I receive being actual email I want and the remaining 95% being spam email. I wish it would go away. I’m ready for an alternative.
Isn’t that the same as post-mail, 95% flyers and junk and 5% bills/letters. Why complain about it, there’s a little button called unsubscribe or delete, it’s not the end of the world!
I can see email becoming less used than in the past, but becoming obsolete is absolutely out of the question. People said the same thing about post-mail once email becoming a standard and we still use – albeit a lot less – post-mail on a daily basis.
Teenagers weren’t big on snail mail back in the old days, either. Our behavior at 16 isn’t the same at 30; just because teens prefer texts and social networking over email now doesn’t mean they will be like that when they get older.
Agreed. Will see if they’re big Justin Bieber fans when they’re 30 as well.
Great point, Chris!
BTW, what does the SMS you mentioned in the article stand for?
Teen-age behavior, tastes, etc.. indicates little of value. About the only thing it currently indicates is that as a culture/people in the U.S. we’re pretty much screwed since about 95 to 99% of the teeny-boppers I encounter are a bunch of lazy, ignorant, self-agrandizing morons.
Who’s going to use facebook, or any publicly viewable site, for business correspondence? Certainly not me.
What a crock! The whole thrust of the remarks she made were aimed at the demographics they mostly serve – NOT the rest of the population that don’t, won’t, can’t or wouldn’t dream of using FB. Oh, and let’s not forget the ones that left because of privacy issues. This seems to be just another flash in the pan idea, shot from the lip of someone who is not correctly analyzing the “other” relevant data and user useage when it comes to emails. Dying indeed! Not!
…probably not (not soon anyway). Show me what’s going to replace it, because it won’t be Facebook. It just is not appropriate for business.
Don’t agree, because aside from workplace emails, common emails as we see in our home “office” PC’s and B.B. and laptops, etc or iPads, etc, our email addresses are on our business cards and in our conversations, and that will never stop. I have noticed a reduced use of the phone and fewer letters in the mail box but that doesn’t mean they will end for any reason. Even though I do have more than one facebook page, I still get emails, use the phone, etc. What will business web pages show for contact info, a Facebook ID? I don’t think so.
I didn’t realize Sheryl Sandberg and the others running facebook were smoking crack.
Do you think Murdock is paying them to make these ridiculous claims, so he can break out the defibrillator for myspace? LOL
Email could go away from its present form, but certainly not to be replaced by FaceBook. Many need an archive of email correspondence for business purposes and there is no such thing in FaceBook. Try finding a pertinent passage/subject/content in a past FB message.
Many need a way to reach a specific group of 6, 12, 50 or 100 on a specific topic. Email.
Many need a quick conversational message turnaround. Email.
Seems I heard some University stop issuing email addresses to students recently since they saw FaceBook as the communications replacement. It is possible that could happen in school, but not out here in the cold hard business world.
Is somebody sniffing glue? How could you replace a email? Inexpensive and effective whats the new email? Paper? LOL
Like newspapers, email is generational. I can’t imagine life without it, while high school kids don’t use it at all. They sign up for email accounts long enough to get YouTube and Facebook accounts. The kids with phones text.
I have to say I can see the benefits of using Facebook as a communication tool. You never lose your contacts, have outdated contacts, you have the ability to broadcast to all or some friends, chat, message, create personal and business pages all in one spot.
Facebook has a few issues to work out before they take over email, if that is the plan. Privacy, interface design, usability, and changing the rules constantly are a few.
I think essentially Sandberg is correct in her assertions.
What is needed is a new form of personal address that has the immediacy of an SMS with the rich and layered immersivity of video and web connected text. Augmented reality with information overlay that allows us to address our environment and our data in multiple ways..no need to carry a screen with you…any window..or device close to you thats free…will carry a conversation…all you need is a personal unique identifyer and the clould will make all of your data local to you where ever you are. Video or audio updates will supplant email as soon as a seamless platform evolves to support it. Iphone 4 is not quite there yet..but its a look at one version of the future. My eyeglasses will recognize that I have not got them on and send me a reminder telling me where to find them..my keys will text me a snapshot of where they are too… Email is not the end of the communication fronteir…the mind…is neural transmitters and nodes..that give the connected a supernatural ability to manipulate data..and the wars fought now over the networks..they say the mind has no firewall…but I disagree…in order to step back..one simply turns the technology off..
Email has the blessed utility of being silent and unobstrusive..all of the technology that replaces it is unlikely to be as benign but undoubtedly equally essential to the next generations
I have no doubt that new forms of communication will rise, but as others have suggested, that does not mean they will make email obsolete, just as handwritten letters and phones are still in use today.
I understand Facebook and at one point when I had an account I “Fanned” Best Buy, Starbucks, Etc. and did like there updates. For some people however that do not have a use for Facebook, they could not get updates and specials if it wasn’t for email. I mean not everyone subscribes to email newsletters but I for one love it better than Facebook. With all the security issues with Facebook and My Space and selling personal info, I got out. I just got tired of reading about friends and family getting up and washing the eye gunk out of their eyes and what they did just 5 minutes ago. With Facebook it is hard not to become friends with friends and just turn them away. With email I just delete it and they never know so I
6th sense is the next big think. Well common sense obviously is not…
How on earth can e-mail disappear.. we’ll always need a specific address where we can be reached.. through our computer, laptop, mobile or anywhere.. and the next big thing would be some sort of linking of PERSONAL websites.. not a throw-it-all-in social gizmo like Facebook.. no a real personal page that which can only be obtained by having our own website.. which will be superseded yet again by something in due time… A “Skype/Email type of addon to a page could possibly be the leader here.. but definitely not Facebook. Facebook dip your head in cold water for a minute and come to your senses will ya !!!!
I didn’t use e-mail until it was invented. Then I had to because I had a job. Kids don’t use e-mail because they don’t have to yet. E-mail is the new “paper trail” so it will not go away any time soon. Business will require it. As for someone with that high of a position in Facebook saying it will go away, it seems like she is hanging out with too many kids herself.
E-mail is for business, social networks are for wasting time. I’d like to see somone try to use facebook chatter to cover their *** over a work mistake. What would the bosses think then?
Not to bash Facebook as I feel it’s a great networking tool, but there is no way e-mail will become obsolete. It’s a form of identification and verification. C’mon FB, please don’t grasp at straws.
The Paper Trail. How many hard copies do I have of all documents…but this world is electric..and in this world we have gone “electric’ or rather digital, “The Digital Movement” I personally think that people should write letters again..physically write..but this world is now digital. I cant count the hundreds or even thousand emails that I sent out that came back
Mailer Daemon or the no replys to all the letters I sent out. Email is challenging. Our Digital World is Challenging. I dont think email is going away…I just hope people dont hit “delete” so often without reading what is at the other end of the message. At least in physical mail you have to take the paper to the trash…with digital you can press delete…end of story. If its our long proposal written out, and carefully designed…or even a book that we have prepared for a project (less than as second can end our hundreds and even thousands of hours in preparation for just that cause..press delete..its gone!) Jobs hang on this thing. I must admit that a paper hanging digital trail is hard to bonefy…too hard. But then our jobs hang right here for something better than email…far better…and hopefully more 3D/4D
I think that is very presumptuous to say that email will be non-existent. Facebook thinks that the whole universe revolves around its social media platform, but we all know users are fickle and just waiting for the next big networking site. With that being the case, email will remain constant and is a necessity.
PS – I highly doubt corporate America wants its employees on Facebook checking communications!
Facebook is just dazzled by their own success. They’d like to think they can tell the future too. I use email for business, all day, every day. And there are things that I want friends to know, that I don’t want to post on facebook and tell the world. So electronic mail is not going anywhere.
I’m somewhat unusual in that I emailed for several years before I even knew it was called “e-mail.” My messages and stories were sent only to the main office of the newspaper I worked for, but it was still email. I sent not at the now common speed of 54.0 Mpbs or 54,000,000, but at a speed of 300. Back then, that seemed amazingly fast.
As a development of the electronic age, email may well eventually go the way of the carrier pigeon. Personally, I suspect computers themselves will someday be replaced. But I don’t see either development happening soon.
Generally, the earlier a development occurs, the longer it lasts. The wheel is still with us; the eight-track player is gone. Paper will probably survive much longer than email. But I suspect both will outlive Facebook.
http://www.loveshade.org/blog
It is just not feasible – there are those of us who have strong need for efficient “systems” and for me – it includes email as being part and parcel with my Facebook endeavors; one could simply not function without the other.
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Yes I think it is! With all the social networks and the amount of texting most of my friends say they hardly check their emails anymore
I’ve been thinking the same thing myself. When I check my email it’s all advertisements with a little work thrown in. It’s certainly not utilized to keep in touch w/ anyone I know anymore. Everyone contacts u via some social network.
Think facebook is talking utter rubbish. Cant see paypal and banks asking for your facebook account can you !!!!!!
Email will never go away for business and professional messaging. Text messages and Facebook are primarily used for social interaction and some product promotion, but serious business will never be conducted through Facebook or text messaging. How could one possibly send or receive a detailed business email through either? Why would I want to login in Facebook when I can easily send an email without it?
I also have a big issue with the idea that teenagers create the trends for the future. I think that the 30-60 year olds at any given time actually do the majority of creating and inventing and while teenagers do influence trends, it is probably the 20-30 year olds that really set trends. Also I would have never said this as a teenager or 20 something, but your perspective in general and interaction with technology changes as you get older. For example, I was a big gamer in my teens and 20′s and then stopped gaming entirely when I started to take my career seriously. Text messaging was lots of fun when I was single and dating, but now that I have a hubby and a child, I don’t have time to text message at all.
I am actually wondering if the novelty of Facebook will wear off or be reduced as time goes by. Certainly many people will continue to use it, but there are other social networks available and a lot of people & marketing departments are joining Facebook because it is the latest craze. I think there is a lot of hype around Facebook and that because traditional media, like newspaper and TV, are becoming less popular, a lot of marketing departments are jumping on the Facebook\Twitter bandwagon because they don’t know what else to do or they want to be cool. I noticed my local paper’s website now has all kinds of embedded Facebook links and I find them very irritating. I use Facebook but the excitement is wearing off. I would probably only check it every few weeks if I didnt get emails from it and it wasn’t available on my Blackberry. As social media matures and its audience matures things will change and I suspect Facebook is the hot product for NOW and not neccessarily the future. Email on the other hand is a tool that is not brand specific. I doubt it will be going anywhere.
bravo – nicely state
This is just sheer egotism on the part of the FB management. Saying things like this definitely shows their inexperience and juvenile viewpoints. Facebook is a fad. Everyone I know who was high on it a few months ago is using it less and less. Pretty soon, it’ll probably just be something the kids use to occupy their time. FB doesn’t encourage meaningful relationships and conversations. When I want to talk to someone about something that really means something to me, I certainly will not be posting it as an “update” on my status. Get a grip, FB management!
This is offensive. I would be willing to bet only 11% of teenagers brush their teeth. Is it going away?
Anyways I think she says the C word around 1:08.