Will Social Media Kill Email?

By Tony Deblauwe

Great article from my friend Pierre Khawand about the future of email versus social networking. See the article here

This idea presents an interesting concept for ways of working in the workplace. All companies face the challenge for more effective communication and division of labor in virtual settings. The ability to have robust discussions to solve complex problems of delivery and service quality are facilitated with more sophisticated tools that social networking technology offers.

Email will continue to be the vehicle of capturing long-term communications as it’s a fabric of everyone’s ability to communicate easily and get work done. The question lies in level of engagement. Facebook for enterprise or even Twitter for enterprise (think Yammer) have not quite taken off as many expected. Part of the education about implementing such tools in enterprise is education (it’s too complex) and utility (how does leveraging this tools improve the productivity of my team and my organization)?

Certainly the tool will slowly integrate more as the norm for employees to get work done, but at what pace and in what form? Gen Y has a lead in terms of expectations around having these tools available to work with and get work done, but is this the wave of the future?

What do you think? Will social media technology phase out email as the de facto set of communication tools in the workplace?