Kids: E-Mail Is Dead

While many of us like checking e-mail on our cellphones, that doesn’t seem to be true with the latest generation.

According to CNET News staff writer Stefanie Olsen, the future of e-mail “might be found on the pages of MySpace.com and Facebook.” It’s not just about chatting with friends, either; she interviewed a group of teen Internet entrepreneurs, who said in the story 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 at the Mashup 2007 conference, which is focused on the technology generation. With friends, Butler said in the article that 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 in the story. The article goes on to suggest that social networks are the next frontier in mobile, since many teens log onto those sites and few don’t have a cellphone with them at all times.

Many phones these days come with e-mail clients built-in, but fewer come with instant messaging programs. For the ones that do, they don’t always support all systems — for example, one could support AIM but not Yahoo! Messenger — and sometimes each instant message counts as a text message, meaning that your phone bill can skyrocket.

Kids say e-mail is, like, soooo dead [CNET News]

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.