It's official. Social media is mainstream with Australians spending more time on social networking sites than anyone in the rest of the world, clocking up an average of 7 hours 17 minutes each in May, according to new data from Nielsen.
Social media is now dominating our time online, accounting for around a quarter of total time spent on the internet, and reaching more than three quarters of active internet users in ten countries around the world.
We've been hearing about the rise of social media for some time, but now that its officially taken hold, what are the implications?
The most obvious one is the death of email. It certainly won't happen overnight, but the way people consume information has shifted, and email is starting to look increasingly stale.
When it comes to predictions about technology disruption, there's more than a few people that believe the death of email is like the paperless office. A nice idea, but not something we're likely to see in our lifetimes.
But within the Nielsen data there's some very real pointers towards consumption of information on mobile and social channels that suggest email will find it difficult to keep up.
The first is data that shows one in four social networking messages has a link to some form of content. So we're increasingly less likely to share interesting stories or photos, via email.
The second is the rise of mobile, with almost 40 per cent of social media users (in the US at least) accessing their social networks from their mobile phone. Sharing of content via social networks just works, and, it seems, it also works on a smaller screen. Email isn't really designed for the sharing of rich content – it can be clunky and slow to download large attachments using email on a mobile device.
The way Google has attempted to link Google+ with Gmail would suggest it is hedging its bets on the future use of email, with Gmail chat also a fallback option.
The third red flag for email in Nielsen's data is the rising use of social media by baby boomers. Gen Y may already be oh so over email, but many people assume older generations are still clinging to it. Yet Nielsen's data show internet users over the age of 55 are driving the growth of social networking via mobile devices, with twice as many people in this age group visiting social networking sites on their mobile phone last year.
Ok, so all of those examples are very consumer oriented, but what of the enterprise, the ultimate heavy user of email?
Probably the most likely firm to help kill off email in the enterprise is Salesforce.com. It has more than 150,000 companies using its Chatter tool, which it recently enhanced to include instant messaging. Chatter is rapidly turning into the Facebook for the enterprise, with real-time communication and more efficient document sharing now enabled. Perhaps Salesforce.com's "No software" mantra should be replaced with "No email".
It wouldn't get much resistance from users stuck inside corporations with heavy firewalls that frequently block genuine email as spam and make sharing rich content an arduous process.
Futurist Ross Dawson says the real problem with email is that for a while almost all personal and business communication was shoehorned into one channel, which created massive overload and made it difficult to sort through everything.
"Many young and some old people are shifting their communication from email onto other platforms. Conversations are moving to social networks, project work is shifting to collaboration platforms, and information sharing happens on new media," Dawson says.
"Yet there are still some things for which email is well-suited."
Dawson is not yet ready to publish email's death notice, arguing new communication channels are simply adding to the channels we already have, rather than replacing them.
"Email is not going to die, it will just fade away from its predominant position in our communication."
This will require a transition for organisations that rely heavily on email to drive traffic to their websites. The challenge will be building engagement through new channels before those click through rates start plummeting.
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Email will return to the sender
It's official. Social media is mainstream with Australians spending more time on social networking sites than anyone in the rest of the world, clocking up an average of 7 hours 17 minutes each in May, according to new data from Nielsen.
Social media is now dominating our time online, accounting for around a quarter of total time spent on the internet, and reaching more than three quarters of active internet users in ten countries around the world.
We've been hearing about the rise of social media for some time, but now that its officially taken hold, what are the implications?
The most obvious one is the death of email. It certainly won't happen overnight, but the way people consume information has shifted, and email is starting to look increasingly stale.
When it comes to predictions about technology disruption, there's more than a few people that believe the death of email is like the paperless office. A nice idea, but not something we're likely to see in our lifetimes.
But within the Nielsen data there's some very real pointers towards consumption of information on mobile and social channels that suggest email will find it difficult to keep up.
The first is data that shows one in four social networking messages has a link to some form of content. So we're increasingly less likely to share interesting stories or photos, via email.
The second is the rise of mobile, with almost 40 per cent of social media users (in the US at least) accessing their social networks from their mobile phone. Sharing of content via social networks just works, and, it seems, it also works on a smaller screen. Email isn't really designed for the sharing of rich content – it can be clunky and slow to download large attachments using email on a mobile device.
The way Google has attempted to link Google+ with Gmail would suggest it is hedging its bets on the future use of email, with Gmail chat also a fallback option.
The third red flag for email in Nielsen's data is the rising use of social media by baby boomers. Gen Y may already be oh so over email, but many people assume older generations are still clinging to it. Yet Nielsen's data show internet users over the age of 55 are driving the growth of social networking via mobile devices, with twice as many people in this age group visiting social networking sites on their mobile phone last year.
Ok, so all of those examples are very consumer oriented, but what of the enterprise, the ultimate heavy user of email?
Probably the most likely firm to help kill off email in the enterprise is Salesforce.com. It has more than 150,000 companies using its Chatter tool, which it recently enhanced to include instant messaging. Chatter is rapidly turning into the Facebook for the enterprise, with real-time communication and more efficient document sharing now enabled. Perhaps Salesforce.com's "No software" mantra should be replaced with "No email".
It wouldn't get much resistance from users stuck inside corporations with heavy firewalls that frequently block genuine email as spam and make sharing rich content an arduous process.
Futurist Ross Dawson says the real problem with email is that for a while almost all personal and business communication was shoehorned into one channel, which created massive overload and made it difficult to sort through everything.
"Many young and some old people are shifting their communication from email onto other platforms. Conversations are moving to social networks, project work is shifting to collaboration platforms, and information sharing happens on new media," Dawson says.
"Yet there are still some things for which email is well-suited."
Dawson is not yet ready to publish email's death notice, arguing new communication channels are simply adding to the channels we already have, rather than replacing them.
"Email is not going to die, it will just fade away from its predominant position in our communication."
This will require a transition for organisations that rely heavily on email to drive traffic to their websites. The challenge will be building engagement through new channels before those click through rates start plummeting.