Is email still powerful in the age of social networks? (infographic)

With Twitter at 300 million accounts and Facebook nearing 1 billion users, it’s hard to imagine that email will remain a dominant source of communication in years to come.  In a world of short tweets and Facebook unified messages, why would one take the time to find an address and write an email? Simple – are you friends with your boss or clients on Facebook?  Okay, maybe they are (and yes, you should probably accept their friend requests).  This infographic (embedded below), courtesy of VisibleGains shows that email is here to stay. Consider this: more than three times the number of email accounts as Facebook accounts.

Facebook and Twitter may have growing user bases, but when it comes to messaging, email is king.  Each day, 188 billion emails are sent from nearly 3 billion accounts.  Facebook and Twitter don’t even come close to this level of activity – a mere 60 million Facebook updates and 140 million Tweets are sent every day.

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Even so, email gets a bad rap.  And understandably so: the enormous amount of spam and graymail (unwanted newsletters, promotions, etc) have created a terrible stigma for email, but social networks still aren’t going to replace it.  Instead, email will evolve to become both a personal and social messaging tool.  If an email is personable and includes information the receiver actually cares about, there’s huge potential to build a great relationship.

Looking forward, what’s in store for the future of email? Is email dead? Many teens and Gen Y folk detest email.  And why not? The Siri’s of the world are encouraging us to give up the keyboard and the speed up the nature of how we communicate altogether.  Still, business is business.  Email is still considered a professional medium, I’d find it hard to imagine all business conducted through poking and retweeting.

Brian Wallace is the President of NowSourcing, a premier social media firm specializing in infographic design, development and content marketing promotion. The company is based in Louisville, Ky. and works with companies that range from small business to Fortune 500.