But then I read a study by Nielsen that reports “member communities, which includes both social networks and blogs, has become the fourth most popular online category – ahead of personal email.” Whoa! Social networking and blogging have overtaken personal e-mail? Could this signal another monumental shift in our communications?
Perhaps. But yet another Nielsen analysis reports that “the heaviest social media users actually use email more” than other segments. My God, how could this be? And where the heck are these people finding the time to be on both social networks and e-mail so heavily?
Here’s my take on what’s going on:
- E-mail isn’t close to being dead because while I can broadcast a status to my Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, I can’t direct message everyone in my universe because they’re not all on social networking sites, nor are they all on the same site. My contact list, however, is pretty much all on e-mail.
- The social networking sites make heavy use of e-mail to let me know that someone has commented on my update, sent me a direct message, written on my wall/profile, etc. I actually find a lot of this e-mail annoying because on Facebook, for example, if I “like” something, I get all the follow-on likes and comments. On some days, it’s just a lot of noise. On the other hand, I like the e-mail reminders because I won’t necessarily revisit a status update, link or friend’s wall regularly. And RSS gets overwhelming and another place to check!
- MarketingSherpa sees a pattern of “aggregation and adoption rather than replacement” when it comes to social networking and e-mail. “Some media suffer in the exchange, but none are eliminated entirely.” In an interesting survey, MarketingSherpa respondents overwhelmingly said that when they want to share a link, 78% say they use e-mail, while 22% say they use social media (there is overlap in these numbers, of course).
- As more and more of us conduct our daily lives online, e-mail is used for confirmations of purchases, meeting reminders, notes from teachers, yada, yada. Somehow, I have a tough time imagining that Amazon is going to send me a tweet about my most recent purchase.
I am one who makes heavy use of social networking sites to keep in touch with family, friends, client and colleague. My e-mail exchanges with certain groups have probably suffered as a result. But the hundreds of e-mails that pour into my inbox each day tell me that e-mail is alive and kicking. E-mail is my lifeline and still supremely critical to my business.
How about you? What’s your ratio of e-mail to social Web usage? Has your e-mail time declined? Is e-mail dead?
