"Newer technologies are making email a less important way of keeping in touch with social contacts"

Of course, that would not have gotten the article as many hits, but, on the other hand, it would have painted a much more accurate picture of the trend.

Email is not dead, or dying. Anyone who works in an office, pays bills online, travels alot or shops online knows that email has many unique advantages to texting, social networking sites or IMing. These advantages will keep email around for a long time.

That being said, email does have some disadvantages, relative to texting, social networking sites and IMing, when it comes to keeping in contact with your friends and family. It is in that arena that email is loosing importance - and trend that will likely continue.

Older people tend to have fewer social contacts and a far lower need/desire to contact them on a regular basis. Therefore, older people are probably less likely to care about or notice emails disadvanages in the arena of social contact.

For younger people, keeping up with your social contacts is an extremely important (if not THE most important thing) in their lives. As a result, they feel more urgency and desire to seek out and utilize better tools for accomplishing that goal. Therefore, they are the ones that have been faster to adopt the new technology.

As they get older, the desire and urgency to keep in contact with friends will wane, and they might find that email suites their needs - just as it does for older people today.

I am 31 and probably bridge the gap between the text-crazy high school student and the stodgy old-timer who is just learning how to use email. I spent many, many hours in my early college years using AOL's Instant Messanger to communicate with my many friends back then.

Now that I am older, married and a busy working professional, the bottom line is I spend 98% of my time either working or hanging out with my wife. I don't need or care to know what my friends are doing all of the time. My social group is down to a few close friends, who also work all of the time and hang out with their wives. Who would I text or IM all day, even if I wanted to? On the occasion (once or twice a month) that I hang out with friends, I will text them, or I might email them, or call them. They are all sitting in front of a computer, next to a phone all day anyways - so any of those three methods works equally well.

Well written. I saw the title and felt a Mark Twain moment coming on.
It's been amazing to watch the growth of social networking sites across the internet and across the world. I do think Chad did bring out the important point that we need to look through the lens of our communication needs rather than the products that were, are and will be there.
And when we think of those needs, we all have many different ones - different from other people but also we each have a variety of different needs at different times.
For facebook, I understand how younger people at college and just into the real world will be using it as part of their ongoing conversations. But lets face it, life does move on, and my friends change or fall out of favor. I can imagine a few awkward moments as we move on with our lives.
In my case, I find facebook a useful tool. It is something I tend to use for friends who I am no longer able to see physically very often. I also use it more as a broadcast tool to let people know what I am up to in a light manner. To be honest, I am less interested in what all my friends are doing every day, or even week/month.
E-mail remains key for me, partly due to the fact that many friends and family cannot keep up with the new modes of communication, but also because it has a key role for personal and reflective words, as well as those for more professional uses.
Even old fashioned snail mail is important to my family. I cannot say that I put pen to paper to any great extent, but my wife makes the most beautiful cards for holidays, birthdays, thankyou's and weddings. The human touch makes even more impact now, when the rest of our mail is bills and unwanted solicitation.
I think Chad hits the spot in his last words - "It's not hard to imagine a future communications command center ..."
Before then however, I think we will see that the tools which are already available will become associated with certain types of communication needs. IM, text, facebook do not in fact impact e-mail - they add to our ability to communicate, and for that I think there is hardly any capacity constraint.

should I care? Can I im him? If not, then the hell with it.

Beautiful summarizing, that said it all. If I was President, you'd

have a job on my cabinet. What are your view on Iraq?

Yeah, and what the hell would you do with more information on a sandspit in your tiny corner of the world anyway. Right Sandy!