The death of email
Yes, it’s on the horizon.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report this summer – “Teens and Technology: Youth are leading the transition to a fully wired and mobile nation.”
Forbes had a great summary of the findings:
According to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life project, barely 5% of American teens aged 12 to 17 prefer e-mail over instant messaging as their digital communications method of choice. Teens view e-mail as a way to talk to “old people” or institutions like companies. Kids, it seems, prefer the immediacy and mobility of instant messaging and text messaging to e-mail, which they might some day refer to as snail mail, the same way most people over 30 refer to the U.S. Postal Service.
Will someone get me my Metamucil?
I can attest to this finding, at least anecdotally. My own high school kids just don’t do email anymore. I now have to tell them when I’ve emailed them something important.
I also run a website and email list for their water polo team at high school. This year we made the effort to get all 50 boys’ email addresses to add to the list. Almost every parent told me that their sons just don’t check their email anymore.
So where are they? IM, text messaging, and social networking services like MySpace. They want instant communications. None of this waiting 15 seconds for an email to deliver!
I’ve talked to other folks in business (at least the Internet business like me) and more than half of our communications are done over IM now. It’s much more efficient than email for project work.
How does this affect your organization? If you want to reach a younger audience, what changes should you start to put in place? How about IM for customer service? There are chat services you can sign up for, and they do have some cool, proprietary features built in there. But using just plain IM works too.