Whilst I was out and about today I got thinking about how deep Facebook has its hooks in the online social interactions between many people around the world. It didn’t seem too long ago that we were quite happy with online forums, e-mail and SMS before Facebook and Twitter showed up.
Outside of work, I don’t write too many e-mails at all. Over the last week, I have received 168 e-mails and have sent a total of five (of which one was a reply to an e-mail received and another was forwarded). on the other hand, I have made just under fifty updates on Facebook and ten updates on Twitter. I couldn’t count how many tweets the people I follow have generated over the last week but it would be stacks.
Once you stand back and look at those numbers it can certainly put things in perspective.
So, is Facebook trying to replace e-mail?
I’m not sure if it is their strategy but obviously our personal information is for their commercial gain. E-mail is almost a private back-channel in the eyes of the social media sites. Facebook’s popularity is at a point where most of your friends may already be on there and if you want to interact with them you need to sign up. The lack of real alternative makes it hard for people to break free, especially since Facebook doesn’t make it easy to “port out” or share all of your information with other sites.
One way or another, you might want to look at your use of social communications and how the ratios stack up.
3 comments
I’m not sure Facebook or any other social media service is capable of replacing e-mail yet. There’s a lot that goes on outside of my Facebook page via e-mail that is there because it’s private and travels between certain people without passing the eyes of others. (I never understood why my Facebook wall is updated with a post one of my friends made to other person, which doesn’t involve me. It’s like eavesdropping.)
You have to consider the amount of content we’re talking about, too. In a forum, e-mail (and some degree SMS such as those over 160 characters) the content is much lengthier and generally of greater quality. Most status updates and tweets are short and lack the ability to really say anything of substance or quality. So while there may be 1,000 tweets in a day from all your followers, they might only make up the quality of one e-mail combined that one may send.
The other thing I forgot to mention is that places like Facebook and Twitter often aren’t a replacement of someone’s e-mail service but rather just another avenue to get their name/brand/content to a wider public. With many services allowing auto updates of your blog posts or content to those social networking sites, places like Facebook and Twitter become attractive “free advertisement” boards.
Author
I totally agree and I think this is what is generating such a large gravitational pull for small businesses who may find it hard to escape from Facebook in particular. It’ll be interesting to see how “Google Me” changes things up, if at all.
What I would love though is one outlet to manage everything else. There are so many that want to be your social hub but I am yet to make a final decision as to how I want mine to hang together!