Every now and then someone offers up their opinion about why they think email is dying, and social media and other communication formats are taking over.
This is why I think email will never die:
1. I still prefer email, even though social media (especially Facebook) makes it very easy to form communities and groups. I don’t think these formats are mutually exclusive, but email is great for one-to-one or one-to-not-too-many conversations.
2. Social media is more of a convenient evolution of the web-based forum into something that works better for community forming. However it does require that you stay on top of it regularly, whereas with email, you can store past conversations indefinitely.
3. Email is more flexible: it can be used for task management and keeping historical information, including files. It’s very much geared towards work-life.
4. Email conversations can be kept for as long as you need them, so it suits short, medium and long-term needs. Social media is very temporal: it’s for the short-term only.
5. Social media is great for meeting people with common interests. Email is great for organizing your own thoughts and making more profound contact with people.
6. Email protocols would be perfectly fine as a communication layer for IM or social media traffic. The other way around isn’t necessarily true: especially since most use proprietary infrastructure and protocols.
What’s your take?
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