You DON'T have mail. The end of email?

KSDK -- Do you tweet? Write on Facebook walls? Or send MySpace Messages? If so, you're not alone. In August 2009, a Nielsen survey found 301.5 million people use social networking sites. That's up more than 30% from the year before. With all these new ways to communicate, email may be a thing of the past.

"I hardly ever use email anymore," said social networking user Freddie Wooten.

In today's high speed, technology driven world, instant communication is key.

"If I want to talk to someone right now, I can," said graduate student Luke Lowry. "I don't have to wait a week for the mail to go to them and then come back."

That's why many users are trading in their Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook accounts for a new way to communicate.

"We've become a culture obsessed with getting information instantaneously," said SLU Asst. Professor of Communication Matt Carlson. "Our technologies reflect the fact that we want to get things right away."

Enter: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Linkedin and Second Life.

"These other tools that become much more personalized," Carlson said. "They become investments. They become where you spend your time. Where you build your identity."

On Second Life, Wooten designed his own avatar to look like him and he uses it to communicate with people all over the world.

"It's more of a real conversation instead of just like a note," Wooten said.

Luke Lowery logs onto his Gmail account, but not to send emails. He communicates back and forth in just a few seconds using the GChat instant messaging system. He says there are different rules that go along with the new technology.

"If you send someone an email, it's implied that I don't need a response right away," Lowry explained. "If you send someone a GChat, it's assumed that I am sitting right here at my computer, waiting for your response."

One issue all these new communication tools raise is how much to share.

"We have to make sure we don't have too much information out there that we can't control or that other people might get and get the wrong impression of us," Carlson said.

Carlson said many people can also fall into the trap of spending too much time communicating.

"People definitely use them a lot more than they used to. I think it's kind of ridiculous," Lowry said.

Courtney Schlueter is a student at St Louis University. She can access it all from her mobile phone, using different tools to communicate with different friends. Email is her least used method.

"I have three friends on Twitter so I talk to them through there," Schlueter explained. "But Facebook is like, I talk to my friends on Facebook."

Different tools for every type of communication. So where does that leave Email?

"I think email has changed in ways that people have yet to appreciate," Carlson explained. "I think that people are starting to see that they have different tools to communicate with people in different ways. Email has become a way to communicate in formal ways."

According to a recent Nielsen survey, email isn't going away. It's still growing in popularity. But social networking sites are growing significantly faster, creating all new avenues of communications for all different age groups.

So you'll probably still get hundreds of emails from co workers. But Carlson says this isn't just a trend among the teens and twenty-somethings..

"I think these social networking sites will be where people go to start on the web," Carlson said.

Lowry agreed, "it's kind of funny. Even my parents have figured out how to use text messages and my mom has a blog site now."

"I believe everybody will jump on social networking," Wooten said. "The younger kids are already on it but the older generations will realize the importance of it."

With these endless new ways to communicate, the only question left... is what to talk about.