The Death of Email. RIP Email.
July 24, 2008 by Guru
Filed under Technology
Email has been ailing for quite some time. I knew it was on its last legs and even with a fresh infusion of retro Rocketmail from Yahoo, things have not been looking good. Then last night on ABC Family’s new “The Secret Lives of Teenagers” the official death rattle sounded. One of the show’s main characters, clearly the series’ resident good girl, stared directly into the camera, opened her perfectly-puffed lips and delivered the final blow: “Email? No one emails anymore.”
Today, mere hours after this chilling proclamation, Facebook launched its new interface, upping its privacy standards and increasing its focus on improved user experience. MySpace has cleaned up its interface as well and has more upgrades in the works. Uber-user-friendly and growing phenom etsy.com, funded in January to the tune of $27 million from Accel Partners and others, is also growing its social networking features.
And just days ago, Hitwise recently reported that traffic to Twitter increased 500 percent for the week ending July 5, 2008, compared with the same period last year. That’s a killer jump for a service that’s plagued with technical glitches and perpetually flashes its famous Fail Whale.
A study by the Pew Research Center waay back in 2005 revealed that even then, almost half of online teenagers preferred to chat with friends via IM rather than e-mail. And that was before Apple’s iPhone.
Can email be saved? Should email be saved? Stay tuned.
