Teens Hate Email
The Comscore 2010 US Digital Year In Review demonstrates one fact very clearly: email is doomed.
Taking as a given that what the kids and young adults are rejecting today will die off quickly, it’s fairly clear that email is on a steep trajectory and will crash in the next decade.
I recall being almost ripped to shreds back at a 2005 Supernova event, when I predicted that email would rapidly die off as soon as texting-like social network-based communications were adopted by young people. A lot of the graybeards there (now in the older two segments of the graph) suggested that I was a lunatic, and should never be asked back. Now, just over 5 years later, the handwriting is on the wall.
Many of the 18-24 year olds are in high school and college, where email is a necessity, so that data point is an anomaly. Otherwise the graph would be linear, showing a clear age-based demographic line.
And for all of those that said spam was email’s biggest challenge, I’ll just say look at the graph. What will it look like in 5 years? 10?
I still maintain that there is a fusion product waiting to be built — one with aspects of email and social network-based messaging. However, Buzz wasn’t it. I will keep hoping for liquid email, though.
(h/t Alexia Tsotsis)
