That is the $64,000 question. I realize some of you may not be old enough to pick up on that reference but you get the idea.

With seemingly no end in sight to the juggernaut that is Social Media (BTW, it’s not a fad,  don’t tell anyone), many folks, marketers and alike, are beginning to wonder if Social Media will one day overtake email as the primary communications vehicle.

Makes sense when you think about it. Facebook allows you to send/receive messages from your contacts, friends, etc… so why bother to use email anymore?

The folks over at Marketing Sherpa were among those wondering so you know what they did? They asked a bunch people if they thought email would be challenged by Social Media for people’s attention.

What they found was that 23% of e-mail marketers thought “competition with social media for recipients’ time and attention” was a challenge for the channel in 2009, and 71% believed it would gain in importance in 2010.

Note the significant jump from 2009 to 2010… panic in the streets?

Hardly.

See the people over at Windows Live conducted their own survey and discovered that more than seven in 10 e-mail users would rather talk to their friends and family through e-mail than through social networks.

Take that Facebook.

So all is well in email-land… no threats around here, right?

Wrong.

Seems as if email’s cellular cousin, text messaging, is becoming all the rage… ok, maybe not all the rage but it is gaining in popularity on good old fashioned email.

eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson put it best…

“With all the focus on social media’s effect on e-mail, the influence of text messaging has been a sideline discussion. Yet text messaging seems far more likely to pose a challenge.”

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