Paul L. McCord Jr.

I have seen several articles around the net the last couple of days such as Slate, Thomas Hawk, Peter Haus, John Murrell, and Eric Gonzolez posting about the end of email.  These articles either agree or disagree with the fact that children are abandoning email for social networking sites.  Many make the argument and even advocate that email will and should fade away because of spam being out of control.  They argue that because most email people get are spam and just take too long to go through.  The position that many kids today do not even check their email being evidence of email’s demise may be compelling but I think it misses the point that kids do eventually grow up.

I have to agree that my own kids never check their email.  They would prefer to send messages back and forth via MySpace.  I often choose to use Facebook myself over email.  Despite this truth, I understand that as an early adopter I like to jump to the newest toy of the day.  I just love it when new ways to communicate are invented.  I have a MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, Twitter, Vox, Wordpress, and a whole host of other accounts.  I am always jumping to the newest toy.  I think most people in the United States are like this.  That is why Wal-Mart continuously builds bigger stores.  Here in Oklahoma City, we have had Wal-Mart for years.  Nevertheless, Wal-Mart continuously closes their stores and builds newer, and bigger stores.

I work on an Air Force Base and have to deal with the fact that I cannot access any social networking sites, or webmail accounts.  At work I am unable to access Zooomr, or Flickr or any other photo sharing sites.  I am unable to access any instant messenger sites either.  The bottom line being that the only way you can access the outside world is to use the base email.  For security reasons most people can understand this control.

Secondly my kids will not use instant messaging either, opting to send messages via MySpace.  At some point they are going to need to send files to each other.  If they do not use an instant messaging program, they will most likely choose email  I do believe that email will continue to be a necessity.  While the above articles make some valid points that are compelling, I do think the predictions of emails failure are missing the point that many corporations, government agencies will not allow their trade secrets to be traded over a third party social networking site.  With this in mind I will have to respectfully disagree.  Email is likely to be around for a long time.

Technorati Tags: email , social networking , myspace , facebook , xanga , twitter , flickr , zooomr , walmart , wordpress , vox , Thomas Hawk , Peter Haus , John Murrell , Eric Gonzolez