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Comment by davidedicillo | Hacker News Reader

> The interface'll have the be unbelievably amazing and innovative for this to even make a dent in people's minds

I guarantee you that they are going to become the default address between people 16 and under. My brother is 16 and doesn't have an email address, but he does have a facebook account.

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That's the scariest thing I've read so far today.

1: My daughter just moved into her own house today. 2: Wow, awesome! I should call them to congratulate her! Whats the new house number? 1: Oh, she doesn't have a landline, she just uses her cell phone. 2: That's the scariest thing I've heard so far today. 1: ???...

To the newest generations email is an antiquated technology that has no real use among their peers. Eventually they might get some email address for college/professional use, but that's practically akin to a fresh college grad now getting a fax machine because "its what we use at the office".

Not shocking.

Edit: Unless by "the scariest thing" you mean the idea of xyz@facebook.com becoming the default for the >17 crowd, in which case, disregard my nonsense.

This is very true. I'm 20 and I've never used my personal email regularly and I'm sure most of my friends haven't either. We've always used MSN or AIM and more recently Facebook to keep in touch.

I'm in my 40s and get more Facebook messages from my friends than I do emails. Many more.

I hadn't thought about it before, but same for me. The only friends who contact me through email are other programmers.

how do you send attachments?

I don't need to send attachments to my friends very often. If I did I'd send it via MSN or email it to them.

I can see the business & college need for email but for friend to friend communication Facebook messaging is already dominant.

But at least here in the US, every incoming first year student at a university in college has to have an email, and receives multiple emails per day from professors, administrators, etc. Email is still a huge part of the current college infrastructure, that could change, but I don't see it happening overnight.

So you never purchase anything online?

I still email occasionally but only when necessary. That's why I said I'm not a regularly user. My point is that I've never used email for friend to friend communication.

I'm a 30-somthing urban professional and almost no one I know still uses MSN or AIM. Tons of people use gchat and gmail, including people who used facebook first. Looking at my adium contacts right now, there are more people signed into gchat than facebook chat, only one signed into MSN and AIM.

My wife's friends are the same way. Sure, lots of them have facebook accounts, but all of her friends and business contacts, new and old, email and gchat regularly. She doesn't even have a facebook account yet and has no intention of ever setting one up.

In fact, I feel less pressure to use facebook these days than I did a year or two ago. I don't even go on it anymore other than when I'm working on apps that use the graph api. My wall is filled with stuff I don't care about and if I want to contact someone I email, chat or text them.

We live in the past here in New Zealand.

What's especially strange about this tend is how something like gmail blows facebook messaging away in terms of UX.

A lot of users though seem to have made Facebook their web world and are willing to accept a crappier messaging system for the convenience.

And it's not early adopters making the switch. I've been using FB for well over 6 years, but I still prefer to send an email over an fb message. Most of my friends are the same.

I think your comparisons are completely wrong. Is there anything you could do with land lines that you cannot do with mobile phones? No, but there are lots of things email does that Facebook does not do (and vice versa).

Send/receive faxes to/from a dedicated fax amchine, use an analog modem or coupler, connect multiple extensions to the same line, connect an Asterisk box, play DTMF tones into the receiver and have it dial, pulse dial by toggling the 'hang-up' switch...

That's all I can thing of right now.

>connect an Asterisk box

I'm pretty sure Asterisk can use a cellphone over Bluetooth.

True. I was talking personal use only because that's where mobiles have replaced land lines.

I may be being slow on the uptake not to have spotted this before, but it hit me last week -

99% of my personal mail - both email and physical mail - is either companies sending out notices (adverts, bills, whatever...) or websites I subscribe to telling me there's something I should see. Direct personal communication has very largely shifted off the platform.

Interestingly, that doesn't yet seem to be the case for corporate communication (into which I include somem voluntary work I do). I still send and receive plenty of email on that account, but this has me wondering for how much longer....

Cut that crap out. That's why people hate email. It is trivial in almost all cases nowadays to get off of those sorts of lists.

Today I have gotten emails: interview info from MS, an announcement as to why the University's power went out, payroll setup info for my Uni, tech advice from a startup friend, and an email from my TA about my lab today.

None of that would have been visible/accessible or possible to communicate to me through anything besides email.

Actually, that _is_ pruned. I'm only getting the notices I want / need for various reasons, not the spam, and do periodically dump senders who aren't interesting any more. Yet I still end up with eMail as overwhelmingly a commercial medium.

And Facebook basically still has those things that are the non-personal emails, they just took them out of the mail stream and put them into your wall.

Especially amazing given that you need an email to sign up.

I can see his point: I see more and more family members who have an email but who don't use it at all.

Instead they are all reachable via FB.

You can sign up only using a phone number.

http://m.facebook.com/r.php

You can get a facebook account without an email address?

In my opinion, this is one of the most interesting questions on here. Facebook's default method of identification is and always has been (since thefacebook.com times) an email address.

If they are launching their own email client, it will be silly for them to require you to provide them with another email address in order to use their site. How will they authenticate people? Or they won't and there will be a ton of spambots with facebook accounts. Either way, I think it's an interesting question and I'll be interested to see their solution.

Given that email is already free, and spammers can register free email accounts, is that really any authentication?

I expect they'll just drop the requirement, and offer you an @facebook.com email during signup.

Mobile verification, I would think. I believe gmail already requires this for new accounts.

Gmail did the same thing, then added mobile number. Now...

He'll have an email address by the time he gets to college. There are still plenty of people who'd prefer to keep their personal and collegiate/professional lives separate.

Only about half of American teenagers end up in college.

How about looking at this way...every second person you meet is a college grad! :-)

Not everyone graduates so it is more like every second person you meet has attended college for some amount of time.

I doubt it. Most schools block Facebook, whereas most do not block Gmail (many rely on Gmail themselves). Using a Facebook email is just asking for accessibility problems.

Most students have cell phones that can access Facebook via dedicated apps, touch.facebook.com, or m.facebook.com.

Why would anybody need a work/school computer behind a content filter anymore?

... where 16 and under would mean 13-16. Facebook accounts aren't technically available to minors (under 13 years old).

My friends' baby boy had one at about 2 weeks old.

I know, the horror, the horror etc.

Is that even possible? Can you sign up to Facebook without having an email address?

Initially you needed a .edu email to register. Then they opened facebook to everyone (any email). Now you don't you need an email address to register? Or did your brother used a throw-away email (gmail?) account?

You need an email address to sign up for Facebook and every time he signs up we write it down. So, he does have one.

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