Social media
Facebook Replaces Email and Phone?
Filed under: Facebook, Ideas, Mobile, Social Media, Trends
Email has bee the the most used internet service since man move out of the caves. It’s personal and asynchronous. You can ad files and links and everything to it. Cool, ehh? It’s fast but not real time, so you can gather your thoughts before answering. Will Facebook-like communication replace all others? Looking at the Facebook penetration rates you can see that in many markets it’s starting to pass two thirds in online population.
And then there’s the phone. THE dominant technology on the planet. Proven, 125 year old, urgent, billable by the minute, lacking all media but voice, mostly one-on-one channel ruled by monopolistic overlords. Seems like a pretty bad deal. But I believe that the change is coming.
Here is the list of countries with at least one million Facebook users and Facebook penetration in online population.
| Country | Facebook users | % of online population |
|---|---|---|
| Venezuela | 7739100 | 83.15 |
| Albania | 1036220 | 79.71 |
| Hong Kong | 3695400 | 75.75 |
| Philippines | 22316340 | 75.14 |
| Taiwan | 11755680 | 72.88 |
| Turkey | 25446320 | 72.7 |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 1010880 | 70.15 |
| Jordan | 1205600 | 69.21 |
| Mexico | 20221700 | 66.08 |
| South Africa | 3465460 | 65.39 |
| Canada | 16841560 | 64.22 |
| Serbia | 2580600 | 62.83 |
| Portugal | 3247000 | 62.82 |
| United States | 148867700 | 62.23 |
| Greece | 3025260 | 60.86 |
| Singapore | 2214360 | 60.53 |
| Italy | 17997800 | 59.94 |
| Israel | 3128780 | 59.45 |
| Malaysia | 9937580 | 58.79 |
| Ireland | 1784720 | 58.66 |
| Croatia | 1309120 | 58.33 |
| Costa Rica | 1164880 | 58.24 |
| Tunisia | 2068320 | 57.45 |
| Bulgaria | 1939340 | 57.12 |
| Dominican Republic | 1712720 | 57.09 |
| Colombia | 12071960 | 56.07 |
| Australia | 9425660 | 55.34 |
| Peru | 4448200 | 55.02 |
| Norway | 2417240 | 54.55 |
| United Kingdom | 28041780 | 54.51 |
| Denmark | 2545640 | 53.59 |
This points in the direction of one multimedia communications channel that combines everything in it. Email, IM, phone, video, etc.
Your handheld communications device might still be called a phone but it will be far removed from what Bell invented. Voice only communications, known as “phone calls”, will have only a small share of its former dominance. The difference between IM and email blurs. Email might be something you send to a person who is not online but that will be increasingly rare.
New communications model will be interwoven int our daily live more than any technology ever has.
And yes, I know the arguments that it will not happen because social networks are just a toy, not serious, unfit for business, etc. And no, it doesn’t have to be Facebook, but it will be something that evolves from Facebook or replaces it.
What do you think will happen in the next 10 years?
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Image credit FindYourSearch
Posted on: February 3, 2011
Excellent anlysis…. Even I doubt the same tehese days… Moreover real-time comm. is a bit troublesome. In that regard SNSes help you a lot.