I remember back a couple of years ago, PEW had a small note within a report on teens use of internet, which said that email was for old people. Well, fast forward to this from Jeremiah’s excellent “Web Strategy” blog. Bear in mind Jeremiah can’t be much more than 30, and he is the old person in this quote (not me!).
My college age kid sister told me that:
“Out of my hundreds of friends, only ONE does not use Facebook or MySpace.”
She also shared her email usage:
“I only use email to get a hold of old people like you”
Source: Web Strategy
Whither email?
Bill Gates made the leap back in the 90’s that email was the perfect solution for the fast paced world because it facilitated asynchronous communication. Participants could respond on their own time, and schedule. That’s the positive.
What email has also done, that we can all see, is eliminated the need for conversation, and has in fact reduced understanding, and effectiveness in many cases. The successful project managers, and Executives are still the ones who get the right mix of email, and ‘picking up the phone’.
FaceBook and Twitter
The quote above from Jeremiah’s site raises two concepts:
- Email is handy to communicate with the older generation.
- Facebook’s current pervasiveness amongst a generation
Facebook, and for many of the readers here, may not be your first choice each day 🙂 is in effect a chatting method between people. This chatting involves words, pictures, video, shared links, widgets, and will only be limited by imagination. If you live in Canada, and especially Toronto, and are not using Facebook, the person next to you probably is, according to Google Trends.
People jump in to Facebook every morning the way ‘old people’ dive for their email in box. They can start conversational snippets back to their friends, and hear what their friends have to say. The key is that its not dissimilar to a conversation … your friends can hear it too, just as in a real conversation, and thus allowing others to jump in. In that respect its reflective of reality for participants.
In the 90’s we had IM, which became the communication method of choice for teens, and most developer communities & technology companies. IM is conversational, but it is highly synchronous, requiring the other person to be there right then. Facebook captures the immediacy of IM, yet retains the asynchronousity of email.
Then we have Twitter. Again its conversational, limiting each ‘Twit’ to 140 characters … you choose who your friends are, and in one striking difference to FaceBook, you can listen in to others conversations. Top bloggers like Robert Scoble and Steve Rubel have been two of the biggest proponents of Twitter, and in much of their thought leadership resides now in Twitter, which has had the phrase micro-blogging associated, but I think its more and broader than that.
Twitter is huge in San Francisco (geek town), New York, London, and Milan. See Google Trends for that analysis.
Conclusion
Web 2.0 has introduced many new tools that facilitate newer methods of conversation. While the ‘old people’ will say these new tools are invasive, perhaps we are just stuck in a paradigm shift.
Paradigm shifts tend to be most dramatic in sciences that appear to be stable and mature (Wikipedia)
An entire generation has just become comfortable with “being on internet” and email. Yet Gen X/Y/M are happily conversing within social networks, spam free I might add. I go back to my analysis on generational change, and consider the impact of the net generation comprising over 43% of the working population by 2011, and 77% by 2016.
Question
- The implications for personal communication are becoming clear, that email will polarise into specific uses. Will email be reduced to business email and older peoples communication?
Bankwatch 
It’s true, there’s a whole set of communication tools that Generation Y uses that I don’t.
I got into Twitter right before my colleague Robert Scoble blew it up before SXSW.
I’ve found myself having to explain Twitter to a lot of old people as of late – many of whom are proficient bloggers.
Scoble summed Twitter’s appeal nicely on his recent “Onward” post: “I’m having a tough time getting back into blogging, which is why I broke my silence with an April Fools’ joke. In a lot of ways it isn’t fun anymore. It’s a business now. Might explain why I like hanging out on Twitter more lately (no anonymous jerks named “Joey” get into my account there).”
Not that “flaming” is new on blogs or the internet, but in my experience, it’s on the rise – particularly from anonymouses (my new favorite term).
I’d argue that Twitter is a move back toward privacy in online communications. Yes, others can see your tweets if you so choose, but participation in the conversation has to be earned and can be revoked. No anonymity.
I most certainly see email moving to business/old people communications. Might many blogs be sliding that way, too?
Good question at the bottom of your post. It seems that banks struggle consistently with how to use email marketing consistently, effectively, etc. However, I do not think that they are currently considering that email may soon become the medium for “older people” only. The shift in mindset about communications will have to be drastic for the banks to be able to reach out to the new generations of consumers who are more interested in newer, evolving forms of electronic communication.
@Trey … re blogs, I think they can sustain, because at least for me, its all my opportunity to express my observations, and views. 5 years ago that would have been an email. So as long as people have something to say, I think blogs will survive and the long tail (very long, in my case) will ensure there is always someone to read them 🙂
But like you I am certain their is a permanent shift occurring here.
@Jean … you are so right. I personally never liked the concept of Bank email marketing because by definition it is spam. Bank customers are using online banking – what a perfect opportunity to introduce things in a permission based, authenticated and personalized secure environment.
Twitter is an interesting phenomenon. Not so much for the personal aspects of it (eg, following the thoughts/movements of John Edwards for example, although there is that), but rather the possibilities for aggregation.
Eg, what if–as a socialigist, historian or a brand for that matter–you could understand in aggregate the memes, themes and activity of a large populace. What if everyone Twittered? It could provide one of the most important data sources for mining (by lots of different constituencies) that we’ve ever had.
Ed … I like where you are going with that thought. The downside to Twitter right now, is the lack of a meme view. Its a stream, which is fine and controllable by limiting the number of friends, but if you had a view to everyone in the way you note …. that would be progress!
PS … I will be money, some smart startup is working on that.
I don’t think email/sms/IM dies in the foreseeable future. Everyone need a reliable one-to-one communications vehicle.
But even if it email does evolve to business/old people channel, is that so bad for banks/CUs? I think most users would consider communications from their bank to be “business.”
Does anyone want their banker, virtual or not, showing up on their MySpace friends list? I think even the “college age kid sister” cited in the beginning of the post would prefer a straight-forward text message or email from her bank.
Anyway good, thought-provoking post.