• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, December 9, 2008

As be begins moderating a panel on email and social media, Loren McDonald, a vice president at Silverpop, is referencing the startling panel of college students at the last Email Insider Summit in May.

Many marketers in the audience were "freaked out" when the students from Ball State essentially said that email is no longer their main source of online communication; instead they've turned to Facebook and other social networks.

But the students then said that reluctantly they know they'd have to use email in order to search for a job -- since the older people who do the hiring weren't exactly using the "poke" function on Facebook or maybe even knew what it was.

And that brought “a collective sigh of relief in the room,” McDonald said.