Today the Wall Street Journal published an article titled “The End of the Email Era”. This wreaks of the, “Hey, look at me I said something”, approach that apparently passes for journalism these days.
Jessica E. Vascellaro’s premise is that just as email came into our lives a over a decade ago thanks to sites like Twitter and Facebook, among others, it is now waning fast.
In its place, a new generation of services is starting to take hold—services like Twitter and Facebook and countless others vying for a piece of the new world. And just as email did more than a decade ago, this shift promises to profoundly rewrite the way we communicate—in ways we can only begin to imagine.
That would have been like saying, back when email was coming into its own, that it was time to dismantle the United States Post Office and proclaiming it the “end of the snail mail era”.
Twitter and Facebook, among others, may indeed be excellent tools to announce partnerships, and deals that have been struck. They may be outstanding platforms to broadcast to your friends, family or followers that you’re really enjoying the bologna sandwich you’re eating or that you’ll be speaking at Blogworld Expo but they are by no means a replacement for email.
Feelers can’t be put out via Twitter. You can’t work out the final arrangements of a deal on your Facebook feed. The simplicity and privacy of email is exactly what makes its place so secure. While the water cooler may be a great place to brag about your “accomplishments” from your wild night the night before, it’s certainly not the place you’re going to “seal the deal” if you know what I mean.
Hilariously enough, at the end of Vascellaro’s article is the classic: —Ms. Vascellaro is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal’s San Francisco bureau. She can be reached at jessica.vascellaro@wsj.com. What? No Twitter username or Facebook profile?
After writing the 
