Spam Causing Email Exodus?

I was asked an interesting question earlier this week. Paraphrased:

With the sheer number of people using semi-proprietary closed systems such as Facebook or Myspace for their personal and business communication, might they be serious contenders for a real spam solution?

Some time ago, I wrote about the, "People are stopping using email" meme. I said then that it's not so much that people are turning their backs on email as a medium, but that they have a wider choice of media available to them now -- such as IM, SMS, and social network websites. They're just more likely to choose the medium best suited to the task. Nothing's changed my mind since then.

Having said that, feel free to poke me, follow me, LinkIn, or whatever.

To paraphrase Meng Weng Wong's recent curry-inspired trendmap, all such media attract spammers if they become sufficiently popular. Lest we forget, spam was first a big problem on USENET -- email came later.