The death of e-mail. by Chad Lorenz
http://www.slate.com/id/2177969/fr/flyout
Ten years later, e-mail is looking obsolete. According to a 2005 Pew study, almost half of Web-using teenagers prefer to chat with friends via instant messaging rather than e-mail. Last year, comScore reported that teen e-mail use was down 8 percent, compared with a 6 percent increase
in e-mailing for users of all ages. As mobile phones and sites like Twitter and Facebook have become more popular, those old Yahoo! and Hotmail accounts increasingly lie dormant.
***FS*** Hotmail, Yahoomail are probably slowing down because those platforms (YHOO and MSFT) are pushing their proprietary messenger services over harder to control mail.. Mail allows for outsiders (spammers) to more easily contact those clients within the MSFT/YHOO walled garden. I think the death of eamil is wayyyyyyy over-rated.. Nobody in their right mind running a business would direct users to an instant messenger in order to conduct commerce.. Well – tech-savy drug dealers on roller skates in central park might. But real businesses have a website.. and an email account which matches that site.. When those kids grow up and enter the workforce, they’ll get an email account which they’ll check religiously.. Next.
Email is required for so many things not least as a security verification.
There is no way that I would ever consider using email that I did not own the domain for. The control of your own email address is a major security consideration.
Furthermore, the fact that you have an email address related to your own domain gives you huge credibility. I tend to screen email manually. Unless I know who is sending it @hotmail, @yahoo and @gmail generally just get junked.
As for Instant Messaging. It still uses an email address, the fact that it might be some obscure email address generated by the service provider does not change that one jot.
So, according to Slate, their headline of: “The Death of E-Mail – Teenagers are abandoning their Yahoo! and Hotmail accounts. Do the rest of us have to?” is effectively translated to this for the under 25 crowd:
“TEH DEATH OF 3-MALETENAEGRS R ABANDONNG THEYRE YAHO!11!111 OMG WTF AND HOTMALE ACOUNTS!1!1 OMG DO DA RAST OF US HAEV 2?!!!????! OMG LOL”
Even for Slate, statements like: “Ten years later, e-mail is looking obsolete” is so far over the top that I’m surprised that I’m even commenting on it.