Has social sharing killed email forwards?

I was thinking this week that over the last year I haven’t received a real noticeable amount of email forwards containing stuff like “forward this on for good luck” or a list of 100 “Your momma’s so fat…” jokes.  Could this be the start of a trend in social media content sharing starting to over take email forwarding?

During my university degree between 1997 and 2000 I remember receiving vast amounts of email forwards. Close to around 50 a day I recall! Granted all of my friends and family were just starting to use email and were discovering the beauty of being able to stay in contact without having to handwrite letters, and the delight of forwarding on stories of guys who wrap nettles around their ‘you know whats’, but this email forwarding kept going well into my working career.

So I’m thinking that this drop in receiving vapid emails can be due to one of two reasons. One, I don’t have that many friends who feel I deserve to be part of their “amusing” email chain! Or two, the rise in social networking and the social sharing ability that skips your email inbox going straight to your social network of choice?  For example users can share videos via YouTube posting them straight to their Facebook status feed for friends to view. Twitter gives users the ability to share interesting content with other users and friends with links that direct them straight to the content.

Taking out the ‘third party’ email inbox has increased our ability to share and access information quickly and is now helping keep our inboxes free of blonde jokes and ‘forward or die’ emails. I like it!