Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment

Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

—Jamie Zawinski, Jargon file entry

My friend Robert and I were talking the other day about Twitter, and he related that he's been seeing people using it like they would use email. This is no surprise; every new "social technology" that comes along ends up being treated like email. Instant messaging did it, etc.

So I'm coining Young's Corrolary to Zawinski's law:

Every social networking software or web application eventually implements an email analogue, or its users will use some function of the network as email.

Of course, you could just use email, but that wouldn't be "Web 2.0".