Digital kids
Kids say e-mail is, like, soooo dead
By Stefanie Olsen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: July 18, 2007 4:00 AM PDT
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SAN FRANCISCO--The future of e-mail might be found on the pages of MySpace.com and Facebook.
Just ask a group of teen Internet entrepreneurs, who readily admit that traditional e-mail is better suited for keeping up professional relationships or communicating with adults.
"I only use e-mail for my business and to get sponsors," Martina Butler, the host of the teen podcast Emo Girl Talk, said during a panel discussion here at the Mashup 2007 conference, which is focused on the technology generation. With friends, Bulter said she only sends notes via a social network.
"Sometimes I say I e-mailed you, but I mean I Myspace'd or Facebook'ed you," she said.
To be sure, much has been written about the demise of e-mail, given the annoyance of spam and the rise of tools like instant messaging, voice over IP and text messaging. But e-mail has hung on to its utility in office environments and at home, even if it's given up some ground to new challengers. It may be that social networks are the most potent new rival to e-mail, one of the Internet's oldest forms of communication. With tens of millions of members on their respective networks, MySpace and Facebook can wield great influence over a generation living online, either through the cell phone or the Internet.
MyYearbook.com
And if you're among those who believe teens are the future, then e-mail could be knocked down a rung. For example, Craig Sherman, CEO of Gaia Online, a virtual world for teens and college kids, describes the age group as "the first and early adopters of new trends. Things they are doing are what everyone will be doing in five years."
To hear the teen panelists tell it, that means e-mail will be strictly the domain of business dealings.
"If I'm talking to any friends it's through a social network," said Asheem Badshah, a teenaged president of Scriptovia.com, an essay-sharing site that launched this summer. "For me even IM died, and was replaced by text messaging. Facebook will replace e-mail for communicating with certain people."
Almost on cue, a Microsoft executive sitting in the audience chimed in with a question to the teens, saying that given his work, he's "interested in people not using e-mail." He asked the panelists to comment about the fact that e-mail transmits to mobile devices, for example. Also, Facebook will send its members an e-mail anytime someone sends them a message on the social network.
Butler replied that she uses Facebook on her cell phone. "I need (Facebook) everywhere I go, but I log into e-mail only once a week," she said.
More and more, social networks are playing a bigger role on the cell phone. In the last six to nine months, teens in the United States have taken to text messaging in numbers that rival usage in Europe and Asia. According to market research firm JupiterResearch, 80 percent of teens with cell phones regularly use text messaging.
Catherine Cook, the 17-year-old founder and president of MyYearbook.com, was the lone teen entrepreneur who said she still uses e-mail regularly to keep up with camp friends or business relationships. Still, that usage pales in comparison to her habit of text messaging. She said she sends a thousand text messages a month.
Scriptovia.com
"I don't know any teen who doesn't have a phone with them all the time," Cook said.
Still, the age group is a fickle bunch. All of the panelists said that they're constantly looking for the next, new thing to stay current with friends; and they often use different social networks and tools to keep up with different sets of people.
Cook, for example, said she uses her own social network MyYearbook to talk to her friends from school, but she uses Facebook to keep up with what's happening at Georgetown University, where she plans to attend school in the fall. Cook blogs at MySpace as a way to meet new friends, and she's also on LinkedIn to mine new professional relationships.
"Teens are on lots of sites and picking and choosing activities from each one," she said. "It's based on who you actually want to talk to."
Similarly, Ashley Qualls, president of WhateverLife, a graphical tool for users of MySpace, said she keeps adding on new social networks to her roster of memberships online. "People leave a trail of where they decide to go," she said.
Badshah said that to subscribe to only one social network means losing out on friendships with people who are active on other rival social networks. That's because having real estate on MySpace or Facebook means keeping tabs with only certain friends through messaging, blogs and recent photos. That the two major social networks don't interoperate could be reason for a new social network that could act as an intermediary to aggregate friends in one place, Badshah said, much the way Trillian did for IM applications like Yahoo and AOL.
"It's a problem for teens--you're like losing out on some of your friends if you choose just one," he said.
"To have all your buddy lists in one place, that's where this is going," Badshah said.
Send insights or tips on this topic to stefanie.olsen@cnet.com.
About the author
Stefanie Olsen covers science and technology for CNET News.com. In this series, she examines the young generation's unique immersion in the Web, cell phones, IM and online communities.
Tips and resources for parents
• Sit down with children when they're online, and make sure they visit only Web sites that are parent-approved. The American Library Association lists great sites for kids on its Web site.
• Use child-friendly search engines or one with parental controls. KidsClick, for example, is a Web search site by librarians.
• Establish a family e-mail account.
• Talk to children about their online activities and online friends because to them, the Internet is an extension of the real world.
• Establish rules for the Internet. Studies from Canada's Media Awareness group have shown that children respond positively to established rules.
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Tech-inspired summer camps: 10 cool choices
Teenager today, tech exec tomorrow
Kids' TV faces new Net restrictions
A new crop of kids: Generation We
Cracking the code of teens' IM slang
Virtual parenting poised for growth spurt
Parents shaky about kids' safety online
Teen-only gym: Virtual reality, real sweat
MySpace blurs line between friends and flacks
MySpace reaching out to parents
Are virtual worlds the future of the classroom?
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When digital kids rule the classroom
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I will keep my encrypted email, thank you very much.
You look at the posts in some of the other stories, and I bet you wouldn't get through even in 2 hours.
I had referred to this in an earlier post on this forum. Wonder if the message will get through the extra-thick heads of the C-Net editors. Will they get around to posting all comments on one page, as they used to do earlier?
i mean, being a kid myself, i use email, for official usage, not for social use. theres instant messaging and facebook for social uses.
are under estimating the functionality of e-mail. There are lots of
things you can do with an e-mail that you can't easily do with and
IM, text message, or a Facebook message. I use e-mail all of the
time but it is mostly for school and work.
Granted, there are Blog posts and Bulletins, but I don't think group broadcasts are the same as one-on-one communication, no matter how public you want your life to be.
So, I'd say MySpace is best suited to personal updates, but not really for in depth one-on-one communication.
That is unless the style of the future is a large number of superficial acquaintainces---which it may very well be.
Flexability is limited where you can't send attachments, and you have to open a person's profile before sending a message, and some profiles can take a while to load.
Sorry, I would never listen to a teenager about the future of technology. Although they might use social networking sites more than email at a younger age, that doesn't reflect anything about the future of the email industry. Trust me, it is here to stay... at least for a few more dozen years.
I personally never used email either as a teen. The later years of my teenage life, I used instant messangers. That had no affect on the demand for email in my adult life. I grew up, and I'm expecting these kids to drop the whole personalized site to become professionals someday. I'm sure a 30 year old with a page called "Butterfly Tears of Depression" is not going to be respected in the business world. They would have to make a change. If not, then God have mercy on their souls.
Let's compare some of the key reasons why email is here to stay compared to Myspace. First off, Myspace is just as bad with spam as email and is going to get worse. I get emails from bands, fake people, and advertisements when my friend's account is hacked. Oh, and the phishing on Myspace is ridiculous... people fail to learn. Also, MySpace email has no connection to outside sites. You cannot sign up for other sites, newsletters, and other important sites... lets just use Paypal as a great example.
I'm not saying MySpace is for kids, but in the end, the article that was written is true only if you live in a MySpace bubble... visiting strictly MySpace and no other sites. Unfortunately, that is not reality (and thank God). Email is here to stay.
As for 30 year olds with social networking accounts, that is becoming more and more of a reality, millions of unprofessional level adults visit these sites daily from their work daily (much to the chagrin of their employers) furthermore, previously immature pastimes are becoming more and more part of the adult lifestyle, video games, networking sites, forums, blogs, SMS and IM ALL started as technology almost exclusively used by TEENS and now have evolved into things regularly contributed to and enjoyed by a large and diverse group of internet users ranging from virtually any age, sex and race.
Oh and clearly you didn't read the article too well if you think it was written from the point of view of a myspace bubble. It was written from the point of view of a teen bubble who uses most are all of the new age communication tools, and who will also become and shape what the internet will become.
However, it's only a percentage of people that get their accounts cracked or constantly get friend requests or "fake people". People who know Internet Etiquette would already know NOT to accept everyone on the Internet who gave you a friend request and etc.
Then again, MySpace is by far the worst of all social networking sites on security and website design. This is also why other networking sites like Facebook, Orkut, Friendster and HI5 are rising to the top again after that sudden surge of users who went over to MySpace.
gnutux
It sounds as if you stop reading a paragraph in...
In the article, the kids said email would be for BUSINESS.
Meaning "official" communications with schools, or businesses
and such. Furthermore, they don't use just myspace, that was
the MAIN POINT of the article!
They use multiple methods: each tool has a different purpose,
for a different set of people.
Personally, I'm a 21 year college student, not exactly in that age
group, which apparently including 18 year olds, so they not
irrelevant] I have over 30 email addresses, I only check 3, the
rest are for sign ups. Please, don't assume just because one has
an email address, that they actually use it!
Now that sites are using cell phones to sign up, they'll be even
less use for a email address.
I agree with them, emails are becoming more of the formal
communication.
Technically the social site's messaging service is a form of electronic mail. Just look at it as fetching your mail from a different mailbox.
As a software developer and active user of several forms of communication, I like to keep up with what's going on, and also try and predict the future. One of the things that I see happening in the future is standard API implementation, that will enable a single application to get your messages from the various networks, and basically bring everything into a single communication hub making it far easier to manage you communication on multiple platforms.
Basically instead of logging on to Facebook to get those messages, then MySpace to get those messages, I can get onto a single third party site which will fetch my messages from Facebook and MySpace. This is much like RSS feeds that's already implemented for blogs, and news articles.
that sounds like todays modern email to me, minus the social network feeds.
I am sure someone like gmail can get these add ons or plugins to pull that kind of stuff in.
Adults dont have that much time on their hands to go to all the sites.
we got work/wife/kids.
Every time you purchase something online, the company you purchased it from sends your receipt to your email, I find it quite unlikely that it will change anytime soon and since the vast majority of internet users use the internet for purchasing of goods and services, I find it quite unlikely that a transaction medium such as email would decline into nothing.
That said, however, the face of email seems to be evolving and becoming more of a file storage system then a communication tool, when we need to communicate directly in a social environment we are much more apt to try said communication via other means such as social networks, instant messaging, text messaging or even voice messaging rather then open our email, and thus email evolves into something that stores and archives personal data for us, transactions, business arrangements and more formal documents will all still be routed to our email. Thus email begins to evolve into what actual mail has become today, simply a medium to send and receive newsletters, legal documents and spam.
Furthermore, as mentioned in the email above, things need to become universalized with the other communication tools, right now if you have facebook and someone else has myspace you cannot communicate directly via these two communication mediums, additionally, if you have AIM and they have MSN you are in a similar predicament, but with email there is a standardized medium, one can send an email with hotmail to someone using email from AOL or their own domain or gmail or any form of email, there are no restrictions beyond spam filtering, this allows for universal digital communication between anyone with email service. This format, however, will soon be more universally adopted though as it is already being seen in text messaging and also with tools such as meebo, trillian and adium that help you communicate over multiple IM services almost seamlessly.
Email is changing no one can argue that, but it's death is not imminent in the least for it is the most universal and wide spread communication tool available to the online community at this time.
And the fact that MySpace cannot send or recieve outside of MySpace is it's blessing and curse. How are you going to email your friend on Facebook from MySpace? Or your professional friend who uses Gmail since he realizes that companies look at MySpace before hiring...
Truth be told, I use Facebook (and I suppose MySpace, too) now more than ever since I've left college and moved far away from the region I went to school in. It's the best way to stay in contact with people, simply put.
I agree with the point that perhaps the death of email isn't exactly a sure thing, but I think it'll serve a purpose through other channels.
Email's biggest issue is spam and while spam populates MySpace and is starting to be a growing problem on Facebook (almost entirely isolated to the marketplace app), there still is no true way of sorting out the authentic messages from the crap and fortunately, a Facebook inbox on my social networking profile does a better job than my Gmail. That's (one of many reasons) why people like messaging over it.
So the future of SPAM and guerilla marketing will be through MySpace and Facebook? Grrrreat.
I have a great idea for a new technology that's going to really add value to the user experience. Imagine: We add additional content layers to messaging and then pretend that this is more efficient and engaging.
No wonder ADD is so prevelant. We move from one or two e-mail addressed to three or four "social networking" sites that let you do whatever the hell that they let you do... My Homepage tells me I have an e-mail without having to do anything; these kids have to log into a dozen sites to find out their Vaigra needs have been fulfilled.
There's a reason we don't hand our economy over to kids. This fad has staying power but it is very early in its evolutionary development.
MySpace sucks, by the way.
And of course, social networking is in no way taking over email. It's just a separate method that is becoming increasingly popular.
It's just another variation of "you can talk to your friend at his house, but it's more fun to do it at the mall, movies, parties and so on".
Myspace and the like are just the internet version of the hang out spots. Nothing more. That there is a hot spot to hang out doesn't change, but which spot it is does. Same with the internet.
MySpace: if you are still in high school; and FaceBook: for college
I and practically all of my friends only use Facebook and it's much easier than email because you can post music, articles, messages, and pictures for all of your friends to see without sending out several individual emails. What would be stupid, would be to send out 429 emails when you want to share your pictures or tell your friends some news.
"WHAT?!" ... and these voices seldom agree on anything.<p>I do
not know what term they apply to a story like this in journalism,
but the jist of it is you are trying to <i>make</i> a story where
there is none. In addition, unfortunately for you, it illustrates a
certain lack of understanding about communications, protocols,
and their origins, otherwise you would not have written the
story, at least not with the idea that <i>email is dead</
i>.<p>You story really should have focused on the people who
rely heavily on third party sources for their personal
communications. I wish you had thoght about that. It would
have shown some basic understanding, and you could've actually
helped a few people.
2. Most of these teenagers are not funding their own accounts and internet access, nor buying their own computers. Basing business decisions on a demographic with zero income is about the dumbest thing you can do.
3. Talking trash with your buddies doesn't constitute business use. It's fine for saying "Hi" and "Let's go hang out at the beach tomorrow", but that's about all. Inability to attach files, and poor formatting for printout preclude it's serious use for transmitting and printing formal documents.
4. Security? What's that?
5. How many businesses have blocked access to MySpace and Facebook as a means of INCREASING employee productivity?
6. My experience is that the greatest users of MySpace and FaceBook are the least producers in this country. The young people who are actually learning and doing spend less than 30 minutes a day chatting and texting each other.
7. It is a proven FACT that the more interruptions a person has by continually answering their cell phone, beeper, blackberry, e-mail, etc, the less productive they will be, period. And that it takes 10 to 15 minutes from each interruption to get fully back up to speed on what they were doing prior to the interruption.
2) Business decisions on a demographic with zero income is the dumbest thing you can do. Wow, you know, I understand what you're saying but I've never figured out how Toys'R'Us makes so much money. . .or Nike managed to shoe so many kids who qualified for reduced price school lunches. Or how kids w/o jobs in college drive brand new BMWs. . I suppose they stole all those things. . .its not like these kids manage are able to get their parents (with ALL that INCOME) to BUY it FOR them. However it is that Toys'R'Us, RockStar Games, Sony, or any number of companies make money is beyond me. Again. . .Genius!
3) Funny. . . the article said that EMAIL was being relegated solely to business use. . .and social networking sites were being used for . . .social stuff. I guess what you call "talking trash". Obviously, you've never had a facebook or myspace account. Let me let you in on a pretty BIG secret. . .its easy to share video, images, etc through them. What about word documents you say? Funny. . .the only time I share non media related files with people is when it is WORK or SCHOOL related. . . and who emails 200MB videos? Is that even possible? I guess for you it is. . because you are a Genius!
4) Security. . . umm. . .how is your email any more secure than my facebook account? Obviously, it takes a Genius to explain this one to me.
5) See number 3. . . or reread the article. When you are at work. . . you typically are not supposed to be socializing. . .thus, who'd be on a SOCIAL NETWORKING site? Some Genius that's who!
6) Really. . that's the biggest load of bulls**t I've seen in your post so far. First, you have no idea what actually can be done with facebook/myspace. You obviously are far disconnected from the "youth" demographic. Now you claim to have extensive personal experience to the point that it allows you to make sweeping generalizations about the majority of facebook/myspace users. Cool, then you won't mind me saying, in my experience, you are an idiot. Genius huh?
7) Your point? Who cares how productive you are after work. Stop wasting your time on the phone, email, cnet, and get back to it Genius!
#2 So what if it's not there computer! what does that have to do with them emailing or using a network??
#3 this says in the article that they DON'T use it for business accounts b/c you can't do those things but I have full convo's on facebook and myyearbook.com and the trash talking come on people trash talk in real life too but that doesn't mean n e thing you can trash talk in your email account too!!
#4 what do you even mean by this point?? If you use a network and post things on the "walls" then yeah people are going to read them and what you say can be used against you.
#5 a lot and that's b/c you don't need to be on there while working! once again read they DON'T use it for BUISNESSES!
#6 Of course you get more done your not concentrating on talking you your friends, are u a lonely senile person?? b/c it seems like it by this statement. I like to know how my friends lives are going plus we are in HIGH SCHOOL and college we aren't in the business world yet so what do you expect? use your brain of course we can adapt and use email too for work and then come home, relax and talk to our friends who we may never see otherwise!
#7 well isn't that nice if they are doing something important they will not answer or something, so why does it matter how long you take to get it done if you get it done?? people want lives you know. another thing is that of course it will take time to get back up to speed it always does for anything you do.
overall you where just senial i mean really what this could do for us in the future could be really great and if expanded the right way can get more done b/c you will be more available so your business might go smoother and you seem more able to do things with less stress b/c you can contact someone and know they will get eh message quickly if you can't talk on the phone directly, were as you don't know how often someone will check there email and may not get something for days too late.
Which, of course, I disagree with.
I really can't stand these social networking sites as the primary means of communication. Email maintains a small footprint; just about every device out there supports it now and it's fast. What's more, the emails are small, so even the slowest of dialup can receive the majority of text based emails without issue.
These networking sites, on the other hand, require that you actually surf out to them, wait for them to load, log in, then navigate to your box. You're limited on how you can format your response, can't save emails, and are subject to outrageously strict space limits, the likes of which were prevalent before Gmail (i.e. years ago). Additionally, you see kids 13-17 talking about their sexual preferences, including giving vivid examples and making clear the fact that they've experienced quite a bit. You have inappropriate pictures of kids floating around. It's a cesspool.
I'm not saying email can't also be used for those purposes. What I'm saying is that for MY email, I don't have to wade through all that crap to communicate with the people I want to communicate with. I can also get my email throughout the day on my phone which has push technology. It's almost a better communication outlet than the voice portion and I don't know what I'd do without it.
These kids will grow out of it. It's a fad; it'll come and go.
Here is food for thought: Has anyone thought that all of this "connectiveness" makes our lives more complicated and that personal space is no longer considered important.
Try this book: <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.**********/Better-Off-Flipping-Switch-Technology/dp/0060570040" target="_newWindow">http://www.**********/Better-Off-Flipping-Switch-Technology/dp/0060570040</a>
If this is the future of humanity we're doomed!
Kids truly are the future- just ask why MS and Apple struggle to get their goods in schools everywhere. If kids grow up wanting to use social networking sites to communicate you can bet that down the road that's what business will be doing.
Am I saying that we'll be using MySpace for business contacts? God, no. If this is truly how communication changes then a new tool will be created to fill the need.
What will happen is that one of these kids will grow up and understand the need to have improved social networking site for business applications and will create it.
MySpace and Facebook are not what will be used. They will fall by the wayside as new sites are created that better merge business and integrate functionality needed by business.
People's comments on this article complained about MySpace's poor interface and load times, about the poor space limits and lack of ability to interface with phones and such. Those comments are defined needs and a jumping off point. Some kid who wants to communicate via social networking and texting in business is going to start a company that builds this site and fills these needs on the business world's terms.
That kid will be rich and business will change- not because e-mail doesn't have it's place, but because a better, more connected, more intuitive piece of software has come along.
Kids can help signal how technology use will evolve over time but we have to keep in mind that applications/services that are successful get tailored to the target segment/demographic and their specific needs.
Take social networking for example - kids certainly led the way and these networks are now going mainstream. There are also many specific family/parent networks out there now and this is evidence that kids can indeed serve as early adopters of new technology. The older demographics may not however use these services in the same way - for example, kids are using these networks to keep in touch, whereas parents may use it to share information or improve communication by using networks such as www.schoolparent.net
email will always be here because its so basic. anything in the future will build upon the concept. the only real changes may be to the interface. Something like the gTalk interface in Gmail. when they're online, it acts as an IM, but when they sign off, its effectively email.
1) over the next 5 years there will be a shift in web formats from standard web pages to groovy looking applications and sotware that can shift the setups and reform them into other formats like formats for mobile devices and even large screen TV pages.
2) The children are going to want all their stuff to have more potential with the ability to work with social networking and the ease of production that you get with myspace.
The thing is at some point probably not that soon yet someones going to crack that nutshell.
For functionality and to over come the dificulties felt by previous generation technology it will probably use servers like buffers for when the persons PC is not switched on and a Fiber/top broadband connection P2P setup for when it is.
This is because the world works in swings and round abouts. So if you limit potential in one generation and offer some social networking novelties you can bet your bottom dollar the next generation will overcome anything they don't like.
This indeed will knock on the heels of communications like simple email.
However at the same time the ability to have a section that gives you all types of messages you've recieved during the day from all sorts of standards will increase.
There you go again swings and roundabouts.
So the truth being the Email will die just as soon as its figured out what comes after the internet however it will evolve eventually.
Teens love to hang out, that is their life and so the opportunity to hang out on the net becomes the next big thing. It is not so much that technology is fueling the next big thing it is the coolness factor. When MySpace becomes dated (and it has already started)kids will move on regardless of how much new technology is pored into it. What happens if it becomes cool to do the retro thing? Life imitates art.
Kids do lots of stupid, and potentially dangerous, stuff. They'll learn, the hard or easy way.
Email isn't dead. There are lots of options and the situation will most likely determine the venue.
You can't archive stuff on facebook. What happens when they go out of business (and they will eventually, almost everyone does).
You can't protect the stuff on facebook.
You are going to depend on these various places to keep private and proprietary info?
I'm amazed at how many people are keeping their company proprietary info on google apps. It's a really bad idea.
Like I said, they'll learn the easy way or the hard way, but they will learn eventually.
"You can't archive stuff on facebook. What happens when they go out of business (and they will eventually, almost everyone does). You can't protect the stuff on facebook. You are going to depend on these various places to keep private and proprietary info?"
What happens if the server all of your archived emails and "proprietary info" fails or is attacked, and you end up losing all of your information? That seems much more likely than a company such as Facebook shutting down all of its operations without first warning its members. Facebook wasn't created for business purposes anyways. It was meant for college students to keep in touch, which I don't think is a bad thing at all.
And before you join in on this orgy of youth-bashing, recall your years when you defiantly blasted your Who, Crosby Stills and Nash, Stones, and CCR vinyls from your turntable.
Sending an email is more private than posting on facebook.
You can send large files and attachments via email that you can't send other ways.
Longer messages are discouraged on websites.