Does email have a future?

Open Thread: The End of Email?

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... only 11% of teens email daily, a statistic she sees as a sign of the coming transition to SMS and social networks. But in 2005, another study found that less than 5% of American teens aged 12-17 preferred email over instant messaging for digital communication. Now, five years later, many of those teens are entering the business world--but we haven't seen AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and G-Chat overtake good old-fashioned email.

At least not yet.

A study by the Nielsen Co. of email consumption in Australia, Brazil, several European countries, and the U.S., found that usage rose 21% between August 2008 to August 2009, reaching 276.9 million people. During that same period, users of social-network sites leaped 31% to 301.5 million people. Because of this sharp growth, Internet communities like Facebook are eating away at the amount of time users spend communicating through traditional messenging services: Between 2003 and 2009, time spent on email sites dropped 41%; social networks, on the other hand, now represent 22% of total user Internet time--up 24% since last year.

Comment: I have two views of email. At work .... I hate it. My inbox is full full full. I save send items to cover myself. I save deleted items for the same reason. For people closest to me ... I treasure the phone or face to face. Graphic captured from the article