"I only use email to communicate with old people"

In business we see person-to-person communication technology as a mix between phone, email and increasingly IM, right? Oh, and social networks are starting to make an entrance too.

So what does it mean to the future of business communications that a whole generation is seeing email as a thing of the past.

These posts and quotes in particular caught my eye today. Is many-to-many social networking going to put email in the same room as the minidisc?

From Jeremiah Owyang's blog, where he quotes his kid sister:

"I only use email to communicate with old people"

"Out of my hundreds of friends, only ONE does not use facebook or myspace"

And I'm hearing the same kind of thing from my friends. My brother in law for example, who's neither a geek nor generation Y, says he only uses myspace and facebook to speak to people online, no more email.

In business we see person-to-person communication technology as a mix between phone, email and increasingly IM, right? Oh, and social networks are starting to make an entrance too.

So what does it mean to the future of business communications that a whole generation is seeing email as a thing of the past.

These posts and quotes in particular caught my eye today. Is many-to-many social networking going to put email in the same room as the minidisc?

From Jeremiah Owyang's blog, where he quotes his kid sister:

"I only use email to communicate with old people"

"Out of my hundreds of friends, only ONE does not use facebook or myspace"

And I'm hearing the same kind of thing from my friends. My brother in law for example, who's neither a geek nor generation Y, says he only uses myspace and facebook to speak to people online, no more email.

Comments

[Jeremiah Owyang]

Please note that I'm quoting my kid sister, these are NOT my words.

I still answer hundreds of emails, sometimes a day.

:(

[Drew B]

Think it looked a bit misleading Jeremiah! :-) I'll make it a little clearer what I meant. Thanks for stopping by.

[Alex]

Interesting you've picked up on this-I was thinking the other day that I don't even really use text messaging let alone email to communicate with friends now-just Facebook and phone calls...It feels more time efficient that way if nothing else. Email is very much a 'work thing'.