Nielsen Jon Gibs, VP, Media Analytics reports the growth of email consumption by social media users but is this a good thing?

“In the past, we discussed ways that social media has transformed the internet, having been so bold to say that social networks fundamentally changed the way we consume online media. So, if social media and social networks are these all-powerful game changers, shouldn’t they eventually make a newsworthy impact on email, the internet’s original “killer app?””

“At least from this small experiment our hypothesis was disproved, but interesting nonetheless.  It actually appears that social media use makes people consume email more, not less, as we had originally assumed – particularly for the highest social media users.”

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/is-social-media-impacting-how-much-we-email/comment-page-1/#comment-15668

Now that is good news for email or is it?

Matt Webb “2008 is the year we hit Peak Attention”

How much do we consume and how much can we really absorb.  Just becomes we consumer more emails do we want them and what is all that media consumption doing to us.  What is the value of the high media consumer, the matrix of traditional marketing and advertising would suggest that the more one is shown messaging the less impact each message has.

Are high social media consumers happy with the ever increasing consumption of email or are they becoming more and more dissatisfied and what is this level of messaging doing to their work efficiently.

All this should lead to the increased need for more and better targeting which the email industry has been telling marketers for years, but are marketers now listening?