Social Networks and Email

There’s been a steady trickle of “Email is Dead!” announcements over the years.
2005 – Pew Internet announces “email may be at the beginning of a slow decline”
2006 – USA Today announces “Email has become the new snail-mail”
2009 – The Wall Street Journal announces “The End of the Email Era”.
That’s not surprising, and it’s due to the importance of email – in the same way that most high-end smartphones have to be pitched as “iPhone killers”, no new communication channel will get any respect unless it’s pitched to the blogosphere (and the venture capitalists) as an “email killer”.
That claim has been debunked lots of times. Repeatedly. Many, many times. More times than that.
But sometimes you need something to make you notice quite how alive email is. I signed up for a Facebook account about three years ago, and had half forgotten about it. After a couple of people mentioned it at a pool party on Saturday, I added three friends yesterday.
This is what my mailbox looks like today (with a couple of private mailing lists blanked out):

Email is looking quite healthy.
If anything does ever kill it, I’m betting it won’t be social networking.