Do You Think Email Will Phase Out?

With all of the social networks nowadays do you think it's possible that email will become a thing of the past? When people need to reach one another, they can do it through a number of free social networks very easily. Say Twitter for example. With a few folks that I am familiar with it's easier and quicker to get a hold of them through Twitter then say calling them.

For me, I mainly use my email for automatic notifications from different websites that I am a member of. Rarely I will need to email someone, but most of the time it's either spam or automatic emails.

So how about yourself? Do you still use email to reach contacts? Or have you turned more to social networks?

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Comment by CJ Aleksinas on October 17, 2009 at 4:13pm: I believe that email will always be there for a couple of reasons such as ebay, myspace, facebook, twitter, etc.. If there was no email you would have to log on to each website basically to see if you have a message or post, by looking at your email you can see if its even worth signing on to that website to get your message or not. So yes i think email will allways be here

Comment by Dean on October 11, 2009 at 10:00pm: I check my email first thing when I first get on the computer. I sometimes don't look at facebook for weeks and have more than once had someone message me there but didn't know until days later. Its their fault for using facebook like that though...

Twitter I use for following things that I'm currently interested in... if there's a product or a service that I'm watching for updates then I'll use it. I made a separate account to follow tweet whores that post "follow me" all the time on this site, but then it was just a waste of time to bother with it after a while. I've tweeted when it has been part of a competition to win something and none of my friends would know I was on twitter without asking, which no one has. I don't use my real name on social networking sites as well.

I know this is further and further from the question, but to be honest I sort of dislike sites like facebook and twitter, and I feel that facebook has sort of killed email. Its a superficial substitute for what was once a way to express yourself to someone more genuinely if you felt like it. Me and my wife both have family overseas and she sort of fills in the gap by using skype a lot, but I miss the option of being a little more personal, which email provides and facebook makes awkward.
Facebook: Your friends, and 250+ of their closest friends, on every page.

To answer the question and repeat what's already been said, for the reason of business alone, email isn't going anywhere.

Comment by Bit Byter on October 11, 2009 at 6:25pm: There's a big difference between 140 characters and a message of unlimited length. I am not on twitter. Of the people I contact regularly the ratio of non-tweeters to tweeters is 15::1.

As for social networks, among family members in frequent communication (though a lot of communication take places by phone), one is on facebook, one on linkedln, four tweet (all under 30), and I'm here. Two were on facebook and gave it up; the third might. For the family (extended), that's a ratio of about 10::1 and note that none of the social networks is used for family communications.

For business, email is the primary non-voice communication tool. Among family the primary non-voice communication tool is email. Nobody wants it different than it is.

Comment by TheGreatWhiteBuffalo on October 11, 2009 at 5:51pm: I also believe that E-mail will be around for a long - long time, even after 2012 ;) :P

Comment by Dan on October 11, 2009 at 3:45pm: A definate NO. Because businesses still depend heavily on email, and I know WAY more people that use email then social networks. Social networking around here is in a definate minority, except for the kids.
My main communications is email as well, with over 75 contacts in my address book who use no social networks at all.

Comment by MacBaby16 on October 11, 2009 at 3:12pm: Good point. I use both. E-mail mostly for work related things though.

Comment by Brad Feltis on October 11, 2009 at 2:33pm: I use email mostly for registration on websites or Newsletters from stores. I recently started using twitter frequently.

Comment by Daan on October 11, 2009 at 2:31pm: I still use e-mail really regularly, but only for school and work stuff. My online life is in Twitter and my website (tumblelog), www.daanberg.com.

Comment by Allan Hollenberg on October 11, 2009 at 2:10pm: Yes I still use E-Mail but not that often.
The reason why I use E-Mail is because it is much saver than something like twitter which is viewable by almost everyone.