Email is Dead – Long live Email

Brief bio background – I’ve been doing email in some way shape or form since my address was:
…!uoregon!chemstor!koblas
or
…{ames,decwrl,pyramid,wyse}! mips!koblas

If that means something to you, then you probably have a clue that I’ve done this for a while.  If it doesn’t here’s some other tidbits, I can write a sendmail.cf file from $* rules, and written SMTP servers, managed 200M++ mailboxes for internet companies…  Mail is in my blood, but at this point it’s just something that I know, from GUI, Spam and Servers it’s not a challenge it’s just an hour here or there to get it working.

Point: I get email.

Now what’s totally funny is that about two years ago I decided to break the mold and really get Facebook, be an engaged social user.   Over the years I’ve posted status updates, read about who’s sick, etc., etc.  I don’t wonder what it’s for, it’s part of my life.

Point: I’m a Facebook user.

What’s interesting is that while I’ve got an address book with everybody in it, LinkedIn to manage those infrequent contacts, this that the other thing.  I continue to find my self sending more and more messages via Facebook…  Why?

Pocket theory, thanks Ryan for helping with the thinking:  We all have friends, when we want to reach out to them how?  Ok, so I’ve got three email addresses for you, one of which I’m 99% sure is no good (it’s your previous employer).  So, I’ve got at least two now..  Which one do I send to, which one do you check, do you check any of them…  This is where Facebook reigns, I know that if I send you a message on Facebook you’ll get it in at least two places without feeling like I’m spamming you.

Not only that but since you probably do want to receive messages from Facebook, you’ve got a good email address registered with them, so I now can totally ignore those “I’ve decided to change from Comcast to Pacbell and I’m not clueful enough to change to a free email account”.  I know I can Facebook you and you’ll get my message regardless of where you read your email…

Now if we could only convince Facebook to give a serious rev to the messaging GUI (should have said no to the mgmt job and come in as a geek, but that’s a story for another day).

ps.  Sometimes I wish I was a writer/editor…  These thoughts would be better framed.