Is Free Webmail Email Becoming an Endangered Species?

People don't log on to Gmail or Yahoo Mail or Hotmail to check their e-mail as much anymore. That's what the web research company ComScore says. And the decline is pretty rapid too - more than 5% fewer visitors over just the past year. And people seem to be hanging around far less once they do log on too. Is it possible that the hottest killer app for the Internet since 1996 is beginning to evaporate? It certainly is in decline; but webmail e-mail isn't going away anytime soon. That isn't the problem. The problem is that if there are fewer people who use e-mail, Internet corporations like Microsoft and Google will no longer be able to easily provide free services the way we have been used to them.

Certainly, webmail email use hasn't fallen as much among the over-25 set. It's the crucial teenage group - those under 17 for instance, who seem to be departing the whole e-mail idea en masse. Only three-quarters as many teenaged visitors as a year ago log on to look at their e-mail anymore; and even among young people who do bother to log on, they don't seem to have any interest in spending much time - the time they spend in their e-mail accounts has fallen by about 50%. So where could they be going? What seems to be replacing e-mail for them? It's Facebook, in case you didn't guess.

Teens are just spending their whole time online on Facebook. Anyone they want to talk to is already on Facebook. The messaging service that Facebook provides seems entirely sufficient for them. They don't see any reason why they should sign on to Gmail or anything else just to say something to someone. It would just be too much trouble. While Facebook's mail service has just been barely adequate so far, they have announced a full-fledged mail service. It looks like ordinary web-based e-mail is really going to crumble under the Facebook assault.

Among people who are too old to actually have any interest in Facebook, e-mail use is still growing - something like 20% a year. But even Facebook isn't the biggest threats that webmail email faces. The biggest threat of them all is the mobile phone. Why the mobile phone? People are still logging onto Gmail or Hotmail through their mobile phones aren't they? Yes they are. The problem though is that smartphone screens are far too small for those e-mail companies to put any ads in on one side of your e-mail messages. If there are more and more people checking their Gmail and or Hotmail through their smartphones or other cell phones, Gmail and Hotmail are going to get fed up with how they're providing a service for free with not even a chance of putting out some advertising in the bargain. One wonders where webmail goes from here.


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