Social Media's Secret Weapon - Email

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/05/social-medias-secret-weapon-email.html

by jot • 15 years ago

8 6 15 years ago

RobIsIT2• 15 years ago

This article sounds a little like a plug for Return Path.

Fred does however conclude with an interesting observation that made me think:

"I do think the rise of alternative notification channels; sms, mobile push notifications, direct messages on twitter, facebook messaging, etc are going to move some of this kind of thing off of email over time."

E-mail is powerful. Groupon proved it to us again with their staggering valuation and penetrating marketing.

However, I think that e-mail is only powerful because it is the only reliable platform over which we have to communicate. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc all have messaging systems, but none of them have been able to push through their own glass ceilings to compete with e-mail as a platform over which to distribute messages.

Trust, market penetration, usability, usage advantage... however you want to justify it, e-mail is "social media's secret weapon" only because social media hasn't figured out how to become more important.

E-mail isn't a secret weapon, it's the only platform available. Make a new one.

spitfire• 15 years ago

Why? What is broken about email? It pops up instantly with imap, it's available to everyone and is very standardized.

facebook, twitter and linkedin are poor copies or niche tools. email is simple and flexible. You can write love letters or close serious business deals with it.

email, is here to stay because it is the simplest most flexible tool.

RobIsIT2• 15 years ago

This is exactly my point. We've seen several iterations of online marketing. Short of spam, e-mail has been such a powerful messaging platform that it hasn't changed - and hasn't needed to.

I don't think that e-mail is perfect. I think that there is something better. I don't know what it is and neither do the current batch of social network powerhouses. It's out there though - email conversion rates are far too low for it to be the end solution :)

Vmabuza• 15 years ago

as far as email being social media's secret i disagree to some extent. Alooot of people disable email notification on most ''Social media'' type sites.

As far as the article goes i really didnt understand its objective. It felt like i was reading an intro to something interesting and then it ended.

fredwilson• 15 years ago

it's a blog post, not article. the idea is to spur discussion. we've got 80 comments so far on the post. so it achieved its goals.

i don't totally understand why people choose to discuss the posts on AVC here at hacker news when there is a much larger discussion on AVC

hollerith• 15 years ago

I prefer to discuss a post on a site owned by someone other than the author of the post because that way, the author cannot spike comments that interfere with the author's communications goals and self-interest.

Social Media's Secret Weapon - Email

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