Is e-mail dead? Hardly

A flurry of blogs and news items on the Internet last week suggested that young Internet users are increasingly relying on instant messaging, texting, and social networking sites to communicate, often via mobile devices, and almost to the exclusion of e-mail.

One of those blogs, by Chad Lorenz at Slate, even asserted that “e-mail is looking obsolete,” under the headline “The Death of E-Mail.”

But the reality is much more complex. Some market reports and analysts predict that e-mail accounts will continue to grow as other messaging modes gain popularity and use of the Internet expands globally.

And while teenagers under 18 appear to often eschew e-mail for social networks or IM, three college students under 21 said in interviews that they rely on e-mail as much as other modes of communication for complicated, lengthier, or formal interactions, such as with professors, and with other students involved in group projects and other school work.

The college crowd “I used IM a lot in high school, but my IM use decreased in college,” said Matt Melymuka, a junior majoring in finance at Georgetown University in Washington. “I use e-mail a lot … very frequently,” he said, noting that he sends e-mail to professors about assignments and to other students involved in group projects for classes.

He estimated that the university sends about 10 broadcast e-mails every day on a range of subjects including public safety. “E-mail is the most formal and best means of communicating, definitely,” he said.

However, Melymuka also declared himself a “pretty big” text messaging user, finding that sending text messages from his cell phone is more useful than e-mail for quick social interactions.

In similar fashion, Andy Tybus, a freshman majoring in mechanical engineering at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, said he checks e-mail at least three times a week to communicate with project group members and to monitor official messages from school officials. But Tybus also has a Facebook page that he checks daily for messages and a Treo wireless handheld that he uses to check and send e-mail.

Another UNH freshman, Ben Parker, who is studying music education, said he checks e-mail as many as three times a day to monitor changes in homework or ensemble rehearsals. The school’s public safety officials also use e-mail to notify students about safety concerns. “A lot of students here use e-mail,” he said. “You have to check it for classes and homework, so it’s really important.”

Still, Parker uses texting from his phone for quick message bursts about meeting others at a school concert, for example, and checks his Facebook page often to stay in touch with friends, he said.

The messaging habits of those three college students might contrast with younger Internet users, but they also support the premise that e-mail is not dead at all, one analyst said in an interview.

“E-mail is not dead. Just because newer methods are growing doesn’t mean the old method of e-mail is dying. It’s not a zero-sum game,” said Alan Reiter, an analyst at Wireless Internet & Mobile Computing in Chevy Chase, Md.

Reiter sees the available modes of communication growing as the Internet grows, and sees younger users becoming savvy at several messaging modes, giving emphasis to one or the other depending on their age. Eventually, they will even adopt video messaging when the technology and pricing are within reach, he added. “We are really entering a multimedia communications age, and that means video,” he said.

At least one market research company, Radicati Group in Palo Alto, Calif., supports what Reiter and others say: that e-mail is still growing despite growth in other messaging modes. Radicati said there are about 1.4 billion e-mail accounts globally and that number is expected to grow by about 200 million next year and by about 800 million in 2011.

Younger teens One of the earliest studies of the messaging habits of young people was done in 2005 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington, showing that nearly half of 1,100 young people aged 12 to 17 preferred chatting via instant messaging to e-mail, according to phone surveys done in late 2004. Despite this trend, they said they still used e-mail more than instant messaging, and Pew has not done a comprehensive follow-up survey to track any changes.

However, one of the Pew study’s authors, Amanda Lenhart, said in an e-mail interview that Pew has done a number of in-depth focus-group interviews since 2005 with the 12- to 17-year-old group showing that e-mail is still used by them for longer communication about subjects that are complex, while IM and text “are more like conversations, better for talking with peers.” She said there is a “mix of individual preferences” that are partly determined by the type of communication device a teen is using.

In other words, Lenhart indicated that younger teens seem to be similar to other age groups in using messaging tools that fit the variety of their communications.

Some recent market analysis examines whether social networking communications might become a substitute for e-mail, which would be a major concern for ISPs running e-mail sites such as Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that some ISPs are starting to incorporate social network functions into their e-mail systems to avoid losing network traffic, which is the basis of maintaining healthy banner advertising rates.

As recently as Nov. 6, Hitwise Intelligence in London noted that social networks are overtaking Web mail, at least in the United Kingdom, by a thin margin. Hitwise said the top 25 social networks, which includes Facebook, Bebo, and MySpace, accounted for 5.17 percent of all U.K. Internet visits by the end of September, compared with 4.98 percent for e-mail services such as Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and Gmail.

“This confirms that social networks are starting to eat into the Web-based e-mail providers’ dominance of the Internet messaging market,” analyst Robin Goad wrote.

Analysts said they don’t know of similar research in the United States, but cellular service providers are “wising up to the new forms of communications,” Reiter said. Although U.S. wireless operators took a long time compared with European operators to offer text messaging, they have been offering instant messaging options for several years. New QWERTY keypads and even the virtual keyboard on the iPhone have made typing and sometimes “thumbing” easy for users sending short IMs or longer e-mails, he noted.

In fact, mobile e-mail will be popular for some time even if the messages are very short, added Tole Hart, an analyst at Gartner. That’s partly because mobile e-mail can be readily recorded for long-term storage. Recently, carriers began to offer Facebook on wireless devices, including the BlackBerry, Reiter added. “E-mail isn’t dying, but other forms are gaining in importance,” he said.