Yet Another Premature Declaration of Email's Death 266
mvip tips the latest in a long line of premature announcements of the demise of email. "The Wall Street Journal article Why Email No Longer Rules is making the rounds online. Fast Company provided a fast response, highlighting the technical shortcomings of trying to replace email with Facebook and Twitter (where do the attachments go?). Email Service Guide points out that Facebook and Twitter are ineffective for one-off communications. With Google Wave on the horizon, we'll probably have to go through the whole charade yet again."
Email is dead (Score:5, Interesting)
Long live email.
Because it doesn't require my instantaneous attention and I get to control when I reply.
google wave? come on now... (Score:4, Interesting)
Just Like the Internet Dying in 2010 (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, the biggest question is
Re:google wave? come on now... (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing with Wave is that it *is* an email replacement. If you use it a certain way, it's directly analogous to email.
You can then *choose* to bring Wave's other features into your conversation.
The way I see it, email is almost perfect, except that sometimes it would be better to insert comments directly into someone's message, than to paste a quote into my reply. Sometimes it would be better to edit someone's text directly, than to reply with my suggested amendments. And Wave let's you do that.
Like email, it won't take off unless you have a critical mass of contacts on it. It's no good using Wave to organise a BBQ, if most of the people I want to invite don't have Wave. I tried to push adoption of email in an organisation which didn't already use it, once. People would seldom check their inbox, because it was usually empty. People used other methods to contact people, because they knew email inboxes seldom got checked. Catch 22.
Re:The Right Tool for the Right Job (Score:1, Interesting)
More social site users that email users? WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
Finishing the alinea you started quoting from:
"In August 2009, 276.9 million people used email across the U.S., several European countries, Australia and Brazil, according to Nielsen Co., up 21% from 229.2 million in August 2008. But the number of users on social-networking and other community sites jumped 31% to 301.5 million people."
Pardon me? 277 million people using mail, 301.5 million using social networking sites?
Am I mistaken in thinking that you actually need an emailaddress to join such a site? How do the 25 something million people manage to get their passwords, notifications etc?
This is just uninspired journalism. Don't know what to write, predict the demise of settled technology X in favour of new technology Y.
Re:Actually (Score:2, Interesting)
I think you'll find that when you DO have occasion to look into your email archive, it's much easier to find a specific email than to find a specific tweet or facebook update.
more social networker users than email users? (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't get those numbers:
In August this year, 276.9 million people in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and Brazil used email (that's equivalent to 90% of the U.S. population). Last year the same figure stood at 229.2 million, meaning a rise of 21% has occurred. But, on the other hand, this August some 301.5 million people used a social-networking type of site
How can that be if you need an email account to even register at twitter or facebook?
You just don't remove email (Score:3, Interesting)
Email will be with us a long long time from now. Not to say it will not expire, it eventually will, just not in near future. Society is structured as a pyramid of services, where services covering more use are layered on the bottom, supporting and being used by higher levels of services. Humans rely on several such base services - acquiring food, necessary common wealth, relationships & communicating, which are provided/made convenient by higher level services - snail mail (post offices), useful clothing etc. Email is another level on top of the level of computing - a basic human need to offload energy use to machines - a very basic abstraction of communication system, also meaning that it is many levels below such services as Facebook and whatever else similiar. You do not remove base service if you have your sanity in behold, and before you can definitely replace it with something equally powerful. Email is so simple and so basic it covers a lot of ground. This is the bottomline. Those who claim it will be replaced better have something equally simple and powerful or they simply have no idea how the world works, which is a whole different problem in itself - the kind of problem that makes you read more books, eat healthier and sometimes subscribe to therapy sessions.
Re:I've said it before and I'll say it again. (Score:3, Interesting)
I modded it flaimbait before, and if I had mod points, I'd do it again.
Its all about Context (Score:3, Interesting)
Google Wave (as soon as they open it up to the unwashed masses) has as one of its big features that the "Legacy Services" are invited to the party.
To this day you could write out on a parchment with a Quill Pen a message seal it with a wax seal and then hand it to a guy that can hop on a horse
and then ride to another guy that will ride to another guy (loop here several times) and then hand it to whomever you wanted it to go to.
Someday Email will be seen as being just as quaint but stuff that works should not be discarded just because its "old" (because its dangerous yes because its illegal yes but just because its old NO).
Excuse me i see a messenger at my door step.
The march or technology (Score:3, Interesting)
Twitter and Facebook will replace email just like email replaced the telephone. And the telephone replaced paper mail.
Seriously. We still use those older technologies for certain things. But some of the jobs they were asked to perform before have been reassigned to new tools.
Telephone was better than paper mail for conversations that needed lots of back-and-forth communication. Email was better than telephone for correspondence that was detailed yet not time-critical. Facebook is better than email for updates that will interest your friends if they have a spare moment but aren't worth bothering everybody in your address book or starting an accidental reply-all storm.
So I think the author is right that we've reached the end of the era when every communication task will get shoehorned into email. But email will continue to do what it's best at (and a few things it's not) for a long time to come.
Re:silly (Score:3, Interesting)
will ever be replaced by fecebook and twatter???
I Keep seeing people try and make up variations on twitter to make it more demeaning. I have never understood that. How can you demean something that outright states it is for twits? Let's get this straight: Twits tweet on Twitter. After all what is a tweet? It is traditionally an almost meaningless sound made by a bird to tell the world "Here I am." It has now been expanded to be an almost meaningless message sent over the Internet by a twit to tell the world "Here I am."
How do you make up a derogatory word for this that is more demeaning than what the creator of said system has already done?
Re:The Right Tool for the Right Job (Score:3, Interesting)
Your email client and the custom local settings.
How do you *know* my email client is more "professional" than my Facebook API client?