E-mail out, Social Media in?

E-mail as we know it is probably going away as communication moves toward twitter and other social media sites says Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Only 11 percent of teenagers e-mail daily and this, according to Sandberg, is a sign of a generational gap that will result in the decline of electronic mail.

"If you want to know what people like us will do tomorrow, you look at what teenagers are doing today," Sandberg explained to Nielsen's Consumer 360 conference this week. She started out her point by asking the audience if they had written a letter by hand in the past 24 hours. No raised hands. E-mail? Everyones hand raised. She said that there is a trend of how communication is moving. I think there is validity to this point, but that's assuming that as teenagers grow older they will remain using SMS rather than maturing by using a more formal means of communication.

This is good news for marketers. It is harder to reach a demographic or audience through e-mail than it is through Facebook. With over 400 million users sharing intimate personal informations on Facebook, advertisers and public relations practitioners can target users at ease with specific messages.

It will be interesting though to see where communication goes, but of course only time can tell. Watch Sheryl Sandberg here http://bit.ly/aJ9wNi!