Comments on: Is Facebook replacing email?

By: sethlevine

sethlevine — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:09:06 +0000

great perspective. thanks for the comment.

By: foolishlessness

foolishlessness — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 06:45:57 +0000

People will always want professional and casual communication to be easily separable. That said, I don't think FB will replace email for Professional/Formal communication anytime soon unless, as someone suggested earlier, FB comes up with a separate but integrated inbox system. Maybe we just need the capability of having 2 or 3 profiles under the same account. One for business, one for friends, one for family.

By: facebookless fool

facebookless fool — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 06:21:17 +0000

AB-SO-Lutely. I am 24 and I have never had Facebook. I went to a college where every student was issued a laptop, and there was wireless internet all over campus. EVERYONE was on FB–all the time. It was rather gradual, but I noticed a decline in people on AIM and MSN which I used to use regularly to keep in touch with friends. Then I noticed that I was getting far less casual email from my friends, and that the email I did receive from them were shorter and less formal. Now that I've graduated I've lost touch with a lot of really close friends because they simply don't use email for casual social communication. I had to make sure to get phone numbers from everyone who I wanted to stay remotely in touch with, but talking on the phone is simply not as convenient since responding or sending messages on FB can be done whenever without worrying about interrupting someone or not getting ahold of them. Bottom line: Facebook has (mostly) replaced email as the device for casual communication for younger generations.

By: sethlevine

sethlevine — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:48:14 +0000

it's been interesting to watch how my own communication patterns have changed over the last 6 months, dave. i definitely find that i'm on facebook messaging more (although still generally for personal rather than professional communication). definitely something i'm still watching….

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 03:01:24 +0000

Seth,

I switched my username to Dave, because some people thougtht I was spamming. Now to the task at hand. I definitely think communication on Facebook will mature much like all other forms of communication do. Facebook is a great networking tool, and with that will come the professionalism of proper communication.

Dave

By: sethlevine

sethlevine — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:10:18 +0000

great point. there's clearly an expectation on fb that the communication will be more “loose”. of course, email used to be like that (exclusively) and while obviously many people clearly don't know proper email etiquette it's now considered completely reasonable for companies to use email for important business communication. so perhaps one of these years facebook communication will raise a few notches as well…

By: coffeeguy

coffeeguy — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:58:31 +0000

I would have to agree with the numbers. From my experience many of my friends will send me a Facebook message over an email any day. One of the reasons I believe this happens is that they have not been taught how to properly use or write email. While they are not sending Facebook messages for business purposes most of the time, I still find that many people are sloppy message writers.

By: Boris

Boris — Mon, 05 May 2008 22:13:48 +0000

I think unless facebook cleans up and streamlines its messaging platform, it will never really come to overtake e-mail (as a background I'm 23…). My message box is already full of spam from various people (including people who I absolutely do not remember) and even people from my college that I didn't even know. Until Facebook finds a way to seriously clean up its echo-system, I think it will never move past the stage of being a communication tool for young people looking to waste their time at work.

Sending multiple emails is also sooo much faster via gmail and outlook – i need at least several clicks to send and then delete one message…

By: fred wilson

fred wilson — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:08:54 +0000

to each his/her own these days. my kids use facebook and text messaging for the most part but now that they have email on their phones (bberry and iphone) they use that as well, but it's not their primary messaging system.

i still use email as my primary method, but as someone else said, it's the new snail mail. i hate doing it and its a chore. i called it "homework" on twitter today. that's how i feel about it.

i find text messaging and twitter are best for me, but they will only be better for a while. they will get more noisy and i'll have to move to something else.

i don't use facebook messaging at all. when people send me facebook messages, they are talking to a black hole

By: mary

mary — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:44:36 +0000

I see. You have a great post with some excellent thoughts. Love hearing the different takes on this subject. Yes 22 in case you wanted to get a better idea. The trend and shift between generations is fun to follow and interesting to hear about.