[eob]

Re: challenging the network effect.

A telling moment that happened two nights ago for me. A friend from ~8 years ago came to visit and we wanted to send a joking message out to a few people from the old group of friends we used to hang out with.

The conversation was literally:

A: "Post it to Facebook and tag everyone." B: "Ehhh. It would be funnier to find an old email thread and reply to it."

We went with B. It seemed like a better idea, plus we weren't sure if folks in the group checked Facebook. But everyone reads email -- and sure enough, we got life updates from the whole gang within 12 hours.

[Joeboy]

Yeah, because of its age, ubiquity, relative lack of growth etc I think people don't consider email along with the emerging sexy social networking platforms. I tend to use it in preference to Facebook if I'm communicating with specific people. I would not use it for sending everybody I know amusing pictures of cats.