Have you read any of the recent articles regarding the inevitable demise of email? If not, here's a favorite of mine ... The Death of E-Mail.

The cause of death is often listed as “lack of interest from the younger generation” given their widespread use of text and instant messaging. The funny thing is, this same generation also represents nearly half of all Facebook users, and guess what messaging tool they’re using in Facebook? Email.

Of course email isn’t the only tool Facebook users have to communicate. They can post messages to each other on “the wall”, they can broadcast their current status, they can “poke” (even “super poke”) each other, and they can even send each other anonymous messages via the “honesty box”. And yet the good ‘ol email “Inbox” is placed prominently in the Facebook UI.

Granted, there is no IM capability in Facebook (yet), so users have no choice but to use the native email capability for communicating with their friends, right? Guess again. My teenage son (an authority on Facebook protocol) confirmed that he (AOL) IM’s (and text messages) with his Facebook friends at the same time that they’re sending email messages within the application. Why? Because some of the unique attributes of email (e.g., time to contemplate a well thought-out response to someone) serve a purpose that even upcoming generations with little or no email heritage can relate to.

The Facebook example provides an interesting (if not ironic) illustration of how existing messaging channels can be applied to new applications, and that in the end, people will always need different messaging tools for different purposes.