The nature of email is certainly shifting towards business dealings, as this article states. However, it's more than that: traditional email is also becoming a message aggregator. As social utilities, such as Facebook, MySpace, etc continue to utilize their own messaging systems, email acts as a feed reader to notify you when you have a message in any of your more specialized systems. So rather than it being the message itself, it becomes the messenger of a message.

> So rather than it being the message itself, it becomes the messenger of a message.

Which is ridiculous. Facebook and MySpace can still get hits on their webpage by forcing you to reply by going to the page but having to go to a different site to read a message is annoying.

Very popular BS these days. facebooks, myspaces, linkedins and friendsters come and go, but nobody has suggested anything even remotely close to power of email.

Spam, along with viruses, spyware and adware (IMHO) is mostly a problem for computer illiterate: those users will be gradually dying off.

The only substantial difference between facebook and traditional email is the restriction on who can send you mail. If all of the people you interact with are all on facebook already and use it often, it doesn't make sense to use anything else.

The fact that you can't get email directly forwarded to you is very annoying, however it is a bit more secure.

(edit there are other differences of course, but they are "non-substantial." The restriction of in-network sending is the only thing that makes it not "email" already as far as this discussion is concerned. If you could message myname@facebook.com then it would be email.)

I hope not ;)

After graduating college I think most people would disagree.

Agreed. It's logical too. Most high schoolers and college students have a very small network of friends, acquaintances, family, etc. (in relative terms).

Once you get into the real world, you have to deal with people all over the place, oftentimes whom you've never met before. That's when email becomes truly useful.

Alternative hypothesis: after college, people aren't as concerned with appearing "cool," so Facebook Wall Posts really don't matter much anymore.

reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated

Spam spoiled email for my family. We now rely on IM for communication.

get a gmail account

For me, instance messaging has replaced the telephone. It is, frankly, better in every way when discussing technical matters.

Email is better when you need to make a more elaborate statement that doesn't require back-and-forth communications.

I have had business email written in the style of text messages. To me, this is offensive, and it's a trend I hope ends.