Social Networks - the new email for teenagers

According to a CNET article by Stefanie Olsen, teenagers today message each other not by email but via texting and social networks such as MySpace and Facebook. They only use email when communicating professionally or with adults.

While email has remained the choice for corporate communications despite the annoyance of spam, the increasing popularity of IM, VoIP, and text messaging have given rise to alternate services. Of all, social networks appear to be the most potent. With tens of millions of members, the two leading networks, MySpace and Facebook, wield great influence over a generation living online, either through the cell phone or the Internet. And just as IM is being replaced by text messaging, social networks are replacing email for communicating with friends.

More and more, social networks are playing a bigger role on the cell phone. In the last six to nine months, American teens have taken to text messaging in numbers that rival usage in Europe and Asia. According to Jupiter Research, 80% of American teens with cell phones regularly use text messaging.

Still, the age group is a fickle bunch. They're constantly looking for the next, new thing to stay current with friends; and they often use different social networks and tools to keep up with different sets of people. They are often on lots of sites and picking and choosing activities from each one, concerned that if they subscribe to only one social network it would mean losing out on friendships with people who are active in other rival social networks.

The two major social networks don't interoperate, leaving an opportunity for a new social network that could act as an intermediary to aggregate friends in one place much the way Trillian did for IM applications like Yahoo and AOL.