The next generation of email?

In class we discussed about how the way we use email has changed over the years. I, and those few who told about their experiences in class, still use email for formal correspondance, but for daily communication with friends email is just too.. well, formal.

Has email already become a communication medium for old people? When the first talks about Facebook's new email alternative came out, it was referred as 'Email killer'. In November 2010 Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg announced the new Facebook email, or how he likes call it: "next generation of email". Then he also made official that it's not going to be email killer, but a new "messaging experience" that includes email as one part of it.

So, the new Facebook mail will combine traditional email with Facebook's current instant messaging system and SMS. You can choose how to reply to incoming mail: You can email, send an instant message or write a text message! You are also able to see conversation histories between you and your friends. And then there is this thing called "Social inbox", which lets you email from your social network (your friends and "people you might know"). This definitely doesn't sound like an email killer, and it frankly doesn't sound much of a mind blowing "messaging experience" either. It sounds like I'm going to get a fourth email box and three is already more than enough.

I think there must be reasons why people use different communication mediums. If I have to contact someone formally I use email. If I have something urgent to tell to my friend, I might as well use Skype. If I don't have absolutely anything interesting to share with anyone, I may still update my Facebook status. I can still do all these things by sitting in front of my computer and I'm pretty sure it won't take any longer that it would took, if I had all these things duct-taped together into some kind of a weird online messaging hybrid that is so god-awfully bloated it's barely usable.

I'm not saying Facebook's email is going to be anything like that, but after having experienced Facebook's problems with regular chat and laggy messaging service, I'm just excited to see how they manage to pull this one off.