The term "social network" means that these types of tools connect you with the people in your life. That's not how these services work anymore.
At this point in the downward spiral of internet life, Instagram is awash with viral videos, none of my friends are active on Facebook, and Twitter—the site I once used to ignite and sustain friendships—is an empty shell . It used to be (it's not even called Twitter anymore). At this point, I basically have no place to talk to all my friends at the same time.
Except in email. We've entered the Web 2.0 era (or maybe Web 3.0, depending on how committed you are to blockchain), and the best way to chat online with a group of friends is an outdated technology from the 1970s. If social networks were meant to connect you with the people in your life (which I think they are), then email is the only social network that still exists.
It didn't have to be this way. Companies operating social networks may decide differently. They could have prioritized actual connection over an insatiable desire for dopamine-driven scale. But they didn't, and their platforms are now terrible at doing what they're ostensibly meant to do.
In the meantime, email still works fine.
Messaging is a fragmented mess
I host a party once a month. I emailed a bunch of people letting them know they could come over. Sometimes a few people reply and all reply, causing slight confusion, and that's okay; sometimes no one does, and that's okay, too. Every month some of the people I email come over and we have a great time. Those who haven’t come tell me they still enjoy getting emails.
It's hard to imagine any other tool that can accomplish this task effectively. There was a time in the early 2010s when I might have used Facebook, but no one I knew under the age of 60 was still active on Facebook. Suppose I could start a Discord server, but that would mean building an entire online community bringing together friends from different areas of my life, and I don't want to do that. Even if I do this, it only works if everyone joins and checks my server regularly. I doubt this will happen.
The same goes for any other messaging service. Most of my friends use a combination of Apple Messages, Signal, Whatsapp, Messenger, and other services that I don't even know about. There's no easy way to send messages from users of one service to users of another, which means there's no easy way to reach everyone at the same time. There's nothing that everyone uses except text messaging, which is a nightmare way to talk to large groups of people.
Email doesn't have these problems. I can send an email to a group of people and it will work regardless of which email provider they use. Whether my friends use Gmail, Outlook, Proton, or an email server running on a Rapsberry Pi, it all works the same, and I'm pretty sure people will actually receive or even read the message. If there is a better tool, I haven't found it yet (finding tools and software is literally my job).
Email newsletters are the new blogging
Email isn’t just for party planning. I run a small email newsletter. It's more or less a roundup of articles I've published from different sources that contain some of my thoughts on life. And pictures of my cat. It's not complicated, but I found value in creating and sending it.
All content in my email newsletter is pushed to other social networks including LinkedIn, Facebook, X and Mastodon. Sometimes I even have brief conversations on these platforms after posting something, which I appreciate. But for some reason, the best conversations always happen in response to my email newsletters. Some of them are with friends I see regularly; some are with people I haven’t seen or heard of in a while; some are with people I work with; and some are with complete strangers. together. All of these are real conversations, featuring an exchange of ideas and a little bit of back-and-forth—a little bit of social engagement, which is more than I can say for my interactions on any actual social network.
If I were an influencer with a large number of accounts on traditional social media platforms, maybe I wouldn’t feel this way. Maybe if I had hundreds of thousands of followers, anything I posted would get quite a few responses. I'm not sure I really want that, though. I also believe that I don’t need to establish myself as some form of pseudo-celebrity in order for my work to spark some conversation.
With email, I don't have to do that. I'm sure some people have different experiences and I'm happy for them. Maybe they'll leave me a thoughtful comment below this article saying the same thing, but I hope they choose to send me a friendly email instead.
