I'm in my 40s and get more Facebook messages from my friends than I do emails. Many more.

I hadn't thought about it before, but same for me. The only friends who contact me through email are other programmers.

I'm a 30-somthing urban professional and almost no one I know still uses MSN or AIM. Tons of people use gchat and gmail, including people who used facebook first. Looking at my adium contacts right now, there are more people signed into gchat than facebook chat, only one signed into MSN and AIM.

My wife's friends are the same way. Sure, lots of them have facebook accounts, but all of her friends and business contacts, new and old, email and gchat regularly. She doesn't even have a facebook account yet and has no intention of ever setting one up.

In fact, I feel less pressure to use facebook these days than I did a year or two ago. I don't even go on it anymore other than when I'm working on apps that use the graph api. My wall is filled with stuff I don't care about and if I want to contact someone I email, chat or text them.

We live in the past here in New Zealand.

But at least here in the US, every incoming first year student at a university in college has to have an email, and receives multiple emails per day from professors, administrators, etc. Email is still a huge part of the current college infrastructure, that could change, but I don't see it happening overnight.

So you never purchase anything online?

I still email occasionally but only when necessary. That's why I said I'm not a regularly user. My point is that I've never used email for friend to friend communication.

how do you send attachments?

I don't need to send attachments to my friends very often. If I did I'd send it via MSN or email it to them.

I can see the business & college need for email but for friend to friend communication Facebook messaging is already dominant.