communication | Lawrence Gee | Marketing, Internet, Creativity, Strategy

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Is Facebook the Next Evolution of E-mail?

October 18, 2007 – 1:00 am

From the daily (often hourly) ritual of checking Facebook for updates on the lives of my friends I began to wonder, could Facebook be the next evolution of personal e-mail? What is E-Mail? Well, Wikipedia defines it as ”a store and forward method of composing, sending, storing, and receiving messages over electronic communication systems.” On the personal side, many people send emails to share news, forward interesting articles, discuss topics, and/or communicate to multiple people at once.

On Facebook, one can definitely compose, send, store, and receive messages (via private message or on someone’s wall). One can share news (through status updates) and forward interesting articles (group postings). Topics can be debated via wall posts and status updates can be equivalent to a message to multiple friends.

The difference for Facebook is interactivity, speed, and personality. Yes emails are informative, but on Facebook wall posts back and forth are conversations. Yes I can spend the time to email all my friends to what’s new in my life, but in Facebook I can merely change the status in my profile and instantly let all my friends know what I’m up to or feeling. While e-mail is merely an address, Facebook provides profiles where I can put a face and personal information (via what they put in their profiles, show in their photos, etc.) to the messages they send. These aspects seem quite powerful. Could we be saying in the future, “I’ll Facebook it to you?” instead of “I’ll e-mail it to you?”