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Apparently email is dead. That is what Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg claimed at the Nielsen Consumer 360 conference last week and what we wrote a brief report about earlier this week.

In her own words,

“In consumer technology, if you want to know what people like us will do tomorrow, you look at what teenagers are doing today, and the latest figures say that only 11% of teenagers email daily. So email –I can’t imagine life without it– is probably going away. So what do teenagers do? They SMS and increasingly they use social networking.”

It’s fun to read –the death of email is announced every couple of years–, but it’s even funnier when you consider that one cannot create a facebook account without an email account… Also many Facebook users like me rely on email for Facebook notifications, for instance when a friend posts new pictures on his wall.

More seriously, the whole argument is flawed. First of all, this 11% number is taken out of context. The original “Teens and Mobile Phones” report from Pew Internet clearly states that it is “the % of teens who contact their friends daily by different methods”. So that 11% figure doesn’t say anything about email usage outside of the friend and family circle.  Indeed the same report states that “Fully 41% of all teens say that they never use email when communicating with their peers outside of school. While not used often for informal peer interactions, email is used in more formal situations such as in school and by parents and other adults”.

Teens and younger people use SMS and social media way more than their parents, not because they reject email, but because they communicate mostly with their immediate network of friends and family. Once they get a job or when they start to interact with the business world, chances are that email will be one of the tools they use daily, like most of their parents. Claiming that email is dead because young people don’t use it is as fallacious as saying that suit and tie is dead because hardly any teen fashion them.

Facebook COO’s statement only reflects the company’s attempt to dismiss other communication means. It is in the same vein of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying about Twitter that “, as good as I think they are, I think I personally just paid too much attention to it”.  It’s all about keeping its audience captive within the Facebook site. It is all about making advertiser believe that Facebook is the next one-stop web experience –and some buy it. Indeed it is much easier to target consumer via social networks than via email –getting that email address is difficult, and advertising via email is considered spamming. Facebook’s 400 million members is the perfect recipe for targeted marketing and advertisement, and this is why Facebook would like you to ditch email entirely. Sorry but email is not going away, if only because it is still the preferred way of communication in the job, business, and formal world.

Interested in more social media news and discussion? Join TNW Social Media on Facebook and Twitter, or grab our RSS feed here.

Today we acknowledge and celebrate the revolution of media becoming social. A day that honors the technological and societal advancements that have allowed us to have a dialogue, to connect and to engage not only the creators of media, but perhaps more importantly, one another.

It’s a day to celebrate the changes in media that have empowered us to stay connected to information in real time, the tools that have enabled us to communicate from miles apart, and the platforms that have given a voice to the voiceless and victims of protest injustice. It’s a revolution worth celebrating. Today, we celebrate Social Media Day and we hope you’ll join us.

So how do you participate? Being social, of course. You can do this online by tracking the social updates in various ways as listed below, or you can make some connections offline by attending an event near you. There are more than 600+ meetups in 93 countries today with thousands of attendees. As far as we know, there is no official holiday dedicated to social media. We think it deserves a day of it’s own, and what better way to celebrate than to connect with your local social media community?

There are lot’s creative events planned from panels, to charity fundraisers and even sporting tournaments. Below is a message from our very own Pete Cashmore explaining the idea, reasons for and goals behind Social Media Day:

A Message From Mashable’s Founder and CEO Pete Cashmore

So what’s next? As Pete mentions, we want this to be a launching point for you to build a lasting relationship with your social media community by continuing to host Monthly Mashable Meetups using our Meetup Everywhere page, or more frequently if you think it works better for your community.

Perhaps today’s local meetup was a place for you to network, but now you can take it one step further by organizing panels, demos and more — or maybe you can just keep it simple with monthly social networking meetups. The point is, let’s keep this social community connected, online and off. And next year, watch for the second annual Social Media Day, as we hope to continue to build on this celebration. The next date of the meetups will be July 27th, class='blippr-nobr'>Mashable’sclass="blippr-nobr">Mashable 5th birthday. Stay tuned and stay social!

How To Participate in Social Media Day

• Meetup Everywhere Mashable: Sign up to attend an event on the Meetup Everywhere Mashable.
• Watch the live streams worldwide: We’ll be updating throughout the day.
• Tweet: Use the #smday hashtag on class='blippr-nobr'>Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter. With so many participating, we should be a trending topic on Twitter on June 30. Also, we’ll soon be announcing a prize for those that tweet or post to class='blippr-nobr'>Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook.
• Add the Social Media Day Twitter theme from TweetyGotBack to your account in support of the day.
• Follow @mashSMday: Follow @mashSMday on Twitter for updates and developments on the celebration.
• Comment via Facebook: Go to Smday.com and leave a comment either promoting your meetup or tell us what you’re doing for your event.
• Upload to class='blippr-nobr'>Flickrclass="blippr-nobr">Flickr: Upload photos to Flickr and tag them with #smday.

Winner of Sony Dash Giveaway

Last week we announced a Sony Dash giveaway that would be awarded to an attendee of a Social Media Day meetup in the U.S. and had fanned us on Facebook. The winner is Heather Spring, an Internet Marketing Manager at Accenture in Chicago, and is attending the Wheaton, Illinois meetup today with a crowd of about 40. Spring, who prior to entering the web world worked as a nuclear engineer, heard about the local meetup through the Mashable e-mail newsletter. She thinks meetups are a great way to socialize in real life with other social media professionals.

“Hopefully we can have conversations longer than 140-character tweets,” Spring said. Why is social media day worth celebrating? She said because “social media has become such a force that allows anyone to be heard – no matter where they are or who they are or what they have to say. And there’s always someone willing to listen.” Congrats to Heather on the prize!

Top 10 Meetups (Based on Attendance)

1. New York, NY/> 2. Sao Paulo, Brazil/> 3. Barcelona, Spain/> 4. Santa Ana, CA/> 5. Antwerp, Belgium/> 6. Buenos Aires, Argentina/> 7. Atlanta, GA/> 8. Boston, MA/> 9. Philadelphia, PA/> 9. Chicago, IL/> 10. San Francisco, CA

Social Media Day Tweets

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See the Closest Meetup to Your City

We’d also love to hear what you’re doing for Social Media Day in the comments below or in the Facebook comments section on Smday.com.

For more Social Media coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Social Mediaclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Social Media channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

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