I’m rolling my eyes once again when I think of the silliness of all those web 2.0/3.0 zealots and “gurus” who quickly discounted the email channel for the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and more.

You’d think email was the anti-christ! I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with naive social media  folks who also rolled their eyes when I’d talk about email marketing’s bright future. Blasphemy, they declared. And yet here we are, a few years into the social media revolution and all the shiny examples, the great ones – Twitter, Facebook, Gowalla, and more, are all being smart marketers.

No doubt, Biz Stone could have tweeted his first edition of the new Twitter Email Newsletter (launched Tuesday) 140 characters at a time, but Biz is a smart dude. He knows that even his own creation has limitations, and that his audience receives information through various channels. Remember when they started sending you email notifications of new followers? Of course you do.

And as many are now saying (and which I believe), email is and continues to be the glue that holds it all together. Companies like Nutshell Mail (Manage your Social Networks through Email) deliver a daily recap of your social media sphere to your inbox a few times a day (sign up for it…it’s really cool). My friend and colleague Brady Sadler wrote a great post on Gowalla’s use of email marketing to create a personal bond with its users. The list goes on and on.

Google Wave? Whoa. Not sure where that stands, but my hunch is nerdy early adopters took hold but not in a way that will mean lights out for Gmail. No way. Not ever.

Email is the common thread – the baseline communication vehicle.  We wake to it every day. Companies like Goodmail are innovating with video in the inbox and the future for rich presentation inside of email is something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. I’d love to see companies like Brightcove get involved if possible. Most recently, Gmail announced you can now run YouTube videos inside an email sent to your Gmail. And even Outlook 2010 is going social, combining various social communications streams into one platform.

Innovations from smart college kids like Inbox 2 are addressing the fact that we have more streams of data coming at us now than ever before and this presents opportunity. I’m not sure about you, but I’m starting to crave a single platform. Exact Target just purchased CoTweet.  HubSpot and its brilliant packaging of Inbound Marketing understands that email marketing is the glue. It’s the number one tactic of theirs that converts the most number of prospects into customers.  Awesome! Where am I going with all of this?

Email is the current of the internet. Always has been, and as far as I can see at this point, it always will be for a long time. Just ask Mark Cuban.

Let’s not rock on, email marketers. Let’s rock on, marketers!

Brett Houle is Co-Founder of SendLabs (@SendLabs), a New England-based email marketing software and services company with customers across the street and all over the world. He’s also a casual twit. Hit him up @heybrett.

Brett Houle is Co-Founder/CEO of SendLabs, a New England-based email marketing software company with great customers across the street and around the globe. Follow him up at Twitter: @heybrett and @sendlabs.