Do you think Facebook will end the era of Email? What makes Mark Zuckerberg think like that?

The exploits of intelligence throw guiding light on issues of convention and industry direction. I would like to state categorically, the innovation feelers and convention drivers do not prove elimination of email; on the contrary, key developmental alerts confirm further exploration of email and systematized evolution of its operational capabilities by application of other microelectronic technologies. In my practice of growth strategy, I had catalogued chronicles of disinformation strategy used as stratagem due to blind ambition. I think Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook Fame is attempting to employ Prognostic Razzmatazz in driving Facebook Performance. I think if he continues on that path, Facebook would experience stratagem-boomerang, the disease inflicted by vindictive customers on deceptive firms. That would certainly be the catalyst for great decline in performance of Facebook. I think he should desist from that impropriety.

Dr Elijah Ezendu
http://advancingcrm.blogspot.com/
http://advancingci.blogspot.com/
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http://elijahezendu.blogspot.com/
http://www.zintro.com/expert/Dr-Elijah-Ezendu

I have been designing and then using email for 30 years. There is no era of email. Zuckerberg, with Facebook or without it, won't come close to ending use of email, whatever you call it. What makes him talk like that? He is a very good salesperson. Like many very good salespeople -- Scott McNeally of Sun was an example -- he crafts a marketing pitch designed to attract the fanatics in his installed base, and then convinces himself that it is true. Sun wasn't truly open; Sun didn't invent the Internet; the network is not the computer; and Microsoft was not Sun's chief competitor; but Scott's marketing pitch allowed him to thrive against his real competitors: IBM and HP. The downside is that when the market inevitably shifts, and what was in the marketing pitch is no longer an issue, you are slow to react to the shift, blinded by your own rhetoric. In Scott's case, that happened with Linux.

Likewise, people-oriented information sharing is not an either-or alternative to email. But I am sure that with a message like that, Zuckerberg will convince himself that it's true, and do quite well for a while; until something totally unrelated to email or information-sharing comes along, and then we will see if he's too slow to react.

Many businesses have become leery of the lack of privacy afforded on Facebook. As long as there is a need for business to business communications that may need privacy, confidentiality, and/or enhanced security, there will be e-mail. I can't see Mark adding the levels of security necessary to meet the requirements of HIPAA or financial information to Facebook that would eliminate those needs for extremely secure communications.

Mark needs to look to his history books for examples of idiot pronouncements: the Titanic was unsinkable; Bill Gates said we would never need more than 10 mg of hard drive; IBM said there was no need for PC's. Time will tell if his comment should join the list of idiot pronouncements.

No, email is not going to be killed by any centralized system. One of the great things about email is that I can use my gmail account to send messages with a link to content related to Microsoft Exchange, or links to Bing, or, honestly, whatever content I feel like. I can trust with 100% certainty that the agent delivering the message isn't going to refuse to deliver it because of the delivery agent's personal agenda.

This is because email is decentralized, with no one entity having the power to restrict some piece of content for all users of email on the web. It would be a horrendous mistake to retrograde to a system in which one entity has that power over all communication. Especially one with Facebook's track record for censorship.

Anna,

Not at all convinced that Facebook will end the era of Email. Remember when Email was going to put the US postal service out of business? Or when computers were going to lead to the paperless office and the 15 hour work week? It may be the relative youth of its leaders but the social media space is rife with this kind of short-sighted hyperbole.

I think Mark likely feels he has to make these kind of bold statements to keep the attention of his users and to keep the capital flowing.

Hi Anna,

I think people have grown accustomed to receiving sales based messages via email and believe receiving sales based posts on your Facebook wall will soon get tiresome. I strongly feel when people go to Facebook they are looking for updates on friends and family, pictures of what 'Little Billy" did this weekend. Not necessarily a link to purchase the new improved sham-wow or its equivalent.

What scares me is when Zucker-burger makes comments like “Facebook will end the era of email” and world wide CEO’s, VP’s, and those in charge of large businesses listen. Just the other day I heard someone say, “email will be gone in a few years” and this is far from the truth. I worry that companies will change focus and start to invest more time and effort in Facebook thinking it will become the source of everything online.

What seems to be getting widely overlooked is that people (customers) are the ones now choosing how they would like to be contacted. Some will always prefer email over other methods, some won’t. As marketers, we need to make sure we have all channels covered.

J

Great answers! I think one of the biggest issues that Facebook Messages (and even Gmail Priority Inbox for that matter) brings to email marketers is that of deliverability. Marketers will have to evolve and adapt new ways to reach their subscribers inbox.

The total value proposition of normal email service can not be provided by facebook vis-a-vis operational policies championed by facebook. Even if facebook changes policies, it will only act as one of the competitors of email. It will never put an end to email.

Anna,

Thanks for your response. Actually, doesn't happen here very often. Not only are there any number of viable/necessary uses for email as part of the ongoing promotion of social networks, there are probably more likely candidates for the role of email killer (possibly Twitter. SMS is gaining ground and appears to be overlooked by many).

Looking forward to what others in the community may have to say.

Cheers,

William

There is one thing that I find compelling about Facebook messages, which is that they are accompanied by your profile picture, and with one click the recipient can see your profile and remind themselves "who you are". I have sometimes used FB to send messages to people that I slightly know (e.g. people I met at a conference months before and added as FB connections), and I think that this may be more effective than standard email for encouraging people to engage with you.

Of course FB is not the only way to do this; you could use LinkedIn in a similar way. Where it all falls down of course is that FB is a walled garden, and you have to be a member to have access to FB messaging. Many people do not join because of data privacy concerns, or because social networking is "not for them", or that FB in particular is too frivolous and "for the young".

So no, FB will not kill email, but it is indicative of the ways that email might evolve to be more useful than it is today.

My FB mail is good only so long as I don't start getting spam like I do in my email account. But now FB is evolving to be more like regular email. So perhaps in the future, we will need an email account that makes you join just to use the email, and it comes with photos and contact history and subject history - and bulletproof protection against spam. It would be like a library of communications, and a yearbook for photos and videos with tags. Whoa, hold on, I think that was FB - before people started friending all sorts of strangers to get their popularity numbers up, and b4 the businesses started trying to make money off of it.

I posted this on the LinkedIn page... thought I'd bring it here too.

I certainly can't answer for what makes Zuckerberg think anything. But I will tell you this - email is certainly not going away. Let's start with the fact that most FB users get notifications of their communications through email to begin with... and couple that with the fact a very large number of email users have never, and never will use social networking sites for fear of virus/malware/brain atrophy. If anything, my email inbox has grown as a result of my FB and LI accounts, not shrunk.

Thank you so very much for your time, William!

You are right! I don't think Mark is going to walk his talk. As of now, I don't see the existence of social networks without email. Don't they need email, when:

1. a person opens a new account on a website/social network
2. when a person forgets his password
3. Agrees to receive promotional offers

Can they ever exist without email?

Facebook will not end the "era of email", and I don't have much more to add to what has already been shared in this thread. You need to be careful with questions such as this one because there is no indication that Zuckerberg does think like this. The CEO of Facebook has not been quoted as saying the new Facebook messaging system will replace what we have come to know as conventional email. If someone can find a quote contrary to what I just wrote, please share it with us.

I agree with some of the comments that were made - Facebook won't replace email, email will begin to evolve. As we have seen with Facebook Business pages, they have completely changed in the past month to become much more user-friendly for the administrator and is much easier to manage. In some ways, email will also begin to improve. Personally, I avoid using email as a marketing tool because it come off as spam if the person is not expecting your email. I know that I get hundreds of emails, so I don't have time to check them all and end up deleting the ones I'm not familiar with. Using Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are definitely more effective since the people you connect with are people who want to know what's going on with your company.

Curiously, I have a different perspective - which doesn't necessarily answer the question but expands it, slightly;

In my experience, the volume of email communications for customer-orientated enterprises is in decline - but that doesn't mean that the social media channels (such as Facebook) are taking up the slack... It simply means that people are moving away from email.

With so many other channels of communication, the spread and choice of channels is growing at an alarming rate - and everyone in the communications industry are trying to second-guess what the next, big social media explosion will be and latching onto it.

email has been around for quite a number of years and it lacks the brevity and ease of use of the social media channels - but would you want to "poke" your bank manager, just because he is on the same channel as you? No - I think the social media channels should be monitored by the enterprises who have a vested interest - and the means of communication with their own customer base may well still be email - or another multimedia solution - not the social media channel itself.

In short; no, I don't think Facebook will replace email, because it is only one of hundreds of social media channels. I do believe email will die a slow death and be replaced by social media apps - including Facebook - but it does not follow that enterprises will use those channels as a means of contact...