Social media not taking wind out of email’s sails
By Mark Evans,
Special to Globe and Mail Update.
With the rise of social media and text messaging, email is losing its value, cache and utility.
Or so the thinking goes.
But here’s the strange and interesting thing: Despite proclamations that email is dying, the fact is quite the contrary.
In fact, email seems to be getting strong and more embraced even though people are also communicating via social media services such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
The number of email accounts worldwide is expected to increase to 3.8 billion by 2014 from 2.9 billion in 2010, according to Palo Alto, Calif.-based The Radicati Group.
If numbers tell the story, it is obvious the use of email is growing rather than dropping.
Why is this happening despite the rise of other ways to communicate?
The biggest reason may be that email provides a place where people can not only send and receive messages but manage, track and organize contacts for professional and personal reasons.
People spend so much time using email because it offers a unified tool or service that is universally accepted and increasingly used.
Most online users have an email account, whether or not they are also using Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.