The CEO of Facebook was announcing a new messaging system that will be rolled out to users in the coming months, as reported by Yahoo!
Quite what it will look like is not clear. But Zuckerberg's intentions are. "If we do a good job, some people will say this is the way the future will work," he told the audience. Which is an understated way of claiming to be replacing email with something much, much better. And with the Facebook stamp all over it.
The fact is that young people don't use email. They message one another through texts, status updates and chat. Curiously they don't seem to have wholeheartedly embraced Twitter although its short form communication fits right into their way of doing things.
Of course it's far to early to know what will become of email. And it's highly unlikely that long form digital communication, in the form of person to person messages, will disappear. It will always have a place, as do handwritten notes and face-to-face encounters.
The way email integrates with other systems will definitely change. Facebook's new communication system will pull together telephone text messages, online chats, emails and Facebook messages into a single system that is driven by user preference rather than technology. The term email may, in time, become redundant as it's absorbed into a wider form of digital communcation.
Quite what the new Facebook system will look like and how it will impact on our lives is yet to be seen. Zuckerberg had the wisdom not to trumpet it as the new way of sharing information; we've all seen what became of the much vaunted Google Wave, which was meant to transform the way we worked but has died quietly because no one used it.
Email is not dead, or even dying. In fact it could be on the road to rejuvenation and a completely new look.
