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I saw that recently Facebook announced that email's days are numbered. Yep, we've heard this little chestnut before but I actually think that for once Facebook may have a valid point. After all, many technology speculators tend to judge future trends by studying what teenagers are doing today and a study showed that in general, teenagers use email less than 11% of the time in their daily online communication, compared to chat and social networking sites which occupy pretty much the entire other 89%.
My own personal experience is that I find email hopeless. It has been ruined by spammers and abusive marketing campaigns. I hate filtering email. I just hate email, full stop, and rarely use it in my private life these days (any of you who have emailed me recently may notice the slow replies). I am noticing more and more people using Facebook as an alternative to email. It lets you exchange messages easily, free from spam and unwelcome cyber-bullshit, and I have even used Facebook to send someone a graphic visual for work purposes to which I got a Facebook response! Social networking is brilliant for communicating, brilliant for work, and is slowly getting better at search, gaming, and other functions.
It was always believed that search was the future of the web and, as we all know, Google has always been at the centre of the web universe as the main starting point for any web session. But even this is changing, and social networking is gradually replacing search as the main launchpad for any web session. Google will no doubt respond by building their own social network, as will Microsoft, but it will probably be some new upstart that really forces a game-changing experience.
Facebook won't necessarily be the ultimate website in the world but it is, along with Twitter and MySpace, the place where it all started. I predict that in the next few years a new social networking architecture will spring up out of nowhere which will cause a revolution, perhaps killing off email as a serious consideration, and frightening all the other big social networks and search engines out of their apathy. The whole online culture is slowly aiming towards the social network as the hub of the whole web experience. Mark my words, do not underestimate it!
It took me a long time to embrace social networking as I initially wrote it off as a teenager's time-waster. How wrong I was! It is, without a doubt, the best communication tool, it's fun, it's easy, it's hugely accessible, and the advertising / spam is kept under strict control because it all has to be paid for (so no millions of penis enlarger pills or casino sites pouring freely intro your inbox). Eventually even sites like this forum (essentially, ALL forums) will shrink away under the shadow of the social network. I've seen enough to now firmly believe that the social network is what the web was invented for, it's just taken a lot of time to figure it out.
I've embraced the social network quite firmly, as my work website is very connected to Facebook and I use them both for work purposes. I do of course use Facebook to keep in touch with buddies too - it's actually thanks to Facebook that I ended up being reunited with my long lost DoverWeb partner in crime Mike Potts. And (I know this may sound horrendous to some of you) we even use Facebook from the living room to tell the kids upstairs that dinner is ready!
It's terrific that the future of the global network is "social" rather than "corporate" or "political".