We had an interesting conversation on our internal blog today, so I thought I’d open the topic up to the public blog in order to get some more opinions.
I’ve been using Facebook for quite some time now – and of late a number of my personal friends have [begrudgingly] joined the foray. Soon afterwards, an interesting thing happened: my personal Yahoo! email usage dropped dramatically. At first, I didn’t notice – then this weekend it hit me that this is the first application that’s even dented my personal e-mail usage. I’ve been on Yahoo! e-mail for 12 years, and can’t remember my usage of it changing meaningfully in either direction until now.
In thinking about reasons why Facebook is denting my personal e-mail usage, a few things jump out at me:
- Spam: my personal e-mail is inundated with spam, the signal to noise ration is way, way low.
- Convenience: I’m already communicating with friends publicly on Facebook (wall / status updates / comments), and privately / synchronously on Facebook (online chat), so why would I leave to send them a private email message? Well it turns out I haven’t been!
- Network effect: If 1/2 of your friends aren’t on Facebook, you likely need to e-mail anyway to be inclusive. At a certain point, though, this tips over to FB.
So, is anyone else experiencing the same trend? Is there finally a potential e-mail killer, at least for personal communication?
tomo said:
If you are having spam problems, switch to gmail.
There are no spams in my inbox now, (1-2 per month!!).
And if facebook changed your emailing activity, that means you talk to your friends via email more than you use it for work? :)
It cant replace email ever, because you don’t want people that need to email you about something ocasionally – to be your friends and see how drunk you were the other night and where you’ve been. Right? Riiight?
:)
Tim said:
Tomo – I agree that Facebook currently is only changing the way I communicate with friends / personal communication, not ‘business’ communication, but that still is significant if that winds up being the case, no?
We use GMail for our work email provider, and I agree, it’s a factor better at controlling spam than Yahoo! is, but I’m kind of attached to my Yahoo! email address. I’ve had it since day one on the Internet, so I’m not ready to give it up just yet. It’s like keeping your Commodore 64 in the garage, just because…
Avi Flax said:
@Tim: you can keep your Yahoo address but access the mail using Gmail, which would get you Gmail’s excellent spam filtering
tomo said:
Well, it is something to notice, that friends and family messaging stuff. It was certainly an interesting thing to see 50 year olds in Croatia who have never been on the internet talk about opening their facebook profile. :)
It was rather spooky though, with all tose spy agencies craving so much personal, factual and relevant information and media content about, well, almost everyone. :)
The problem with facebook as it turns out, is it’s best side. A lot of people become your facebook friends. And the laws of probability are spot on here, as many of them are people you couldn’t remmember by name for a few minutes, and the you spend a few more wondering: “Why would this guy make me his fbf? We played football together twice! Wtf?!”
In the end, you’re too polite to refuse his request.
That’s what is going on with facebook, at least here in my part of the world.
About yahoo mail, I know what you mean. But, a friend from my office uses it, and I laugh every time he tries to send an attachment and starts moaning, or registers at a website and goes out to light a cigarette while the email confirmation arrives. :) It’s bad for ya! :)
tomo said:
What I meant is, FB is rapidly loosing ground here. The fact they send you an email when you get a private message is the only thing keeping it alive for me. :)
Tim said:
@Avi – great idea. Done and working well.
Sam said:
My ISP (BT) uses Yahoo for the email service, and it’s total rubbish. I’ve never used it and it still seems to get hundreds of junk mail every day, with email addresses in to the ‘to’ line that aren’t even mine.
Gmail is definatly the best, no forced ad signature like Hotmail, and virtually no spam.
The Facebook API allows applications to send email its facebook users (the message appears in the facebook inbox), although they have to agree to this.
Theres nothing wrong with email, only email clients.
Gmail is the only mail client that I’ve ever seen with threaded conversations, like on Facebook. Even MS Outlook which has been around since email began doesn’t have this (says alot about Micro$ofts inovation). Even their Windows Live Mail version of outlook express only just goes as far as to display the users Messenger picture.