RIP For Personal E mailing

Every year I notice more and more decline in personal E mail account usage. Now the question that I ask is whether personal E mail correspondence will only be a footnote within the next few years. Fact is, the youngest (and the future of computer usage) computer users much prefer online chatting, text messaging and phone tweets to old reliable E mail. Just like the old fashioned phone call from a land line home phone is dying, so is E mailing personal information.

As an oldie, like many others who came on line when there was no IM or chat alternative, I am clinging to E mail and still prefer it, probably for the opposite reason younger computer users like their own favored mode of communication. They want immediacy and I don't. The problem with E mail, according to those liking the faster methods of reaching another person, is that it involves time consuming signing into the mail box, typing in a subject heading and composing a literate paragraph or two.The young users like words, phrases, slang and want to get on with it immediately because they also want an immediate reply. They see time differently than the average person who prefers the slow, more thoughtful and more precisely written E mail. Too E mail users don't want to have communication immediately. They separate their E mail and personal lives far more than do the users who like instantaneous responses.

Now that social networking sites have chat areas and other more instant response attributes, the younger user feels no need to bother with E mail messages for normal social discourse. People can conduct the same activities on the social networks as they did before via email, IM, and other communication properties, but now they can do so more efficiently. This is more appealing to younger users who have grown up and are more comfortable with the newer modes.

A quirky irony to this movement away for personal communication by E mail is that you need an e-mail account as an id to sign in to face book or whatever other social media site you prefer more than E mailing. To, business hates the social networking sites for the very reason many like it- it's too open. An E mail account ensures a business more privacy and does not have an open or vulnerable platform that could reveal what the business does not want others to see.

So E mail may become an almost exclusive business province, while the faster alternatives to E mail are used for personal contacts. As the number of personal contacts I have through E mailing decreases each year I see that. It's a kind of downgrading of E mail to a segment market as opposed to universal usage. But then greater choice is a good thing. Others can tweet and chat and Im all they want. My first preference is still E mail.