The death of email? - the hullabaloo caused by David Fincher's movie The Social Network

As all the promotion, hype and lobbying for David Fincher’s film about Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook for nominations and awards at the Golden Globes , BAFTAs & OSCARS abound, Facebook is headlining the news.

The London Evening Standard ran an article ( 17th Jan 2011) on the theme that “texting, instant messaging and Facebook will soon make email seem as obsolete as the fax machine.”
Surveys in the United States on email usage have shown a decline:-

2008 Business users on average sending 140 emails per day
2010 Business users on average sending 93 emails per day
2011 Business users are expected to send on average 84 emails per day

Social network accounts are fast closing on email accounts. Research specialists Nielsen state that
in 2010 2.9 billion email accounts in the world and 2.1 billion network accounts
Nielsen predicts that by 2014 there will be 3.8 billion email accounts and 3.6 billion social network accounts.

In work it is easier now to notify a group of people about meetings and collaborate in real time on Facebook Messages than it used to be by email.

Communication is no longer a matter of managing your inbox, outbox and electronic desk accessories but rather dipping in and out of a constant flow of conversation which whirls around us.

( Scroll down for free summary of research study Buyers' views of sales people)

For marketers, building up list of loads of email addresses was painstaking and protracted work.

Today it is possible to tweet on a subject, tag it and swiftly reach a relevant audience.

Say something worth saying and they will quickly find you. Sending a marketing email with a pitch will as likely as not end up in the junk mail file.
Yet many may stick with email because of its formality and that only the content of the email and the email address whilst a social network message exposes more of one’s identity with the attendant security worries.


Email is effective for arranging things but is not so fluid at collaboration. Compared with using the applications on Facebook, email is a clunky back and forth method of communication.

When you want to show something as we do when demonstrating to a client we should be able to bring it right up on screen as you talk through as the client sees the demo.










What does this all mean to Professional Selling?

We need to work how best to use all the various ways we can communicate by

Twitter,

Updating by Facebook /LinkedIn,

Blackberry messenger,

Skype,

Instant messaging,

Apple’s facetime

or SMS.

However in the business field email’s survival will be ensured.


There is considerable fear and unease on the openness of social networks and the possibility of leaks. Also there have billions that have been invested in email security.
Email also provides an easily organised record of communication which provides a paper trail for legal purposes.

"The report of the death of email" as Mark Twain might have said " is greatly exaggerated."

Click for free executive summary of the Buyers Views of salespeople research study