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."
But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun.
Why wait for a response to an email when you get a quicker answer over instant messaging?
Because you don't always need some response within 15 secs, nor do you want to always be responding to some questions that take away your time and concentration. Even if you have your email client open all the time, you can leave writing a reply to it for later time.
If you know you need a quicker response, you send an IM or call my phone. Something in between and you send an SMS.
For that matter I dont want everyone to know everything about me, I dont want everyone to know I'm available or not, I dont want everyone to know all the other people I know, nor do I want everyone to know something that only certain people should know.There's also no way you'll get me to install facebook or twitter apps on my phone. If I'm not on computer, there's no need to contact me other way than calling me (and I dont even always keep my phone with me - if I'm busy with other stuff, I'll call you back on better time)
Exactly right. Why would anyone confuse Facebook or Twitter with professional tools. An email can be a very professional means of communicating (provided that you employ proper grammar an etiquette). Social networking tools are great and may find a place to communicate between close colleagues but they should never be mistaken for a professional solution.
Not to mention Facebook and Twitter are totally closed systems. Both you and the recipient need a Facebook account in order to communicate via Facebook. In contrast no one that I exchange email with has the same provider as me.
Email is right there with Phone number and Postal address.
Facebook and Twitter are one the same level as messaging someone through any third party website, many discussion forums have messaging features by default.
Actually that's the one area where Google Wave might actually be the next evolutionary step after e-mail, while Facebook and Twitter are not even close to being suitable replacements: Server federation and an open protocol specification(namely, XMPP). Allowing me to send a message to anyone@some.org is probably the best thing about e-mail, and it is something that will never be implemented by Facebook, as it goes against their entire business model.
In contrast, Wave has been built around this ability, and
Email is useful for formal communication, for a long term record of something -- e.g. for CYA. It is also possible to get some work done by only checking mail at certain points of the day.
IM, Twitter, Facebook etc really are of very limited use in a business situation -- they are slower and clumsier than a phone conversation or face to face. Probably useful in situations where no phone is available (or VOIP for international calls) or for quick mass distributed maessages, but other th
....Always on?... My mail is always on, and will notify of new mail instantly... Facebook and Twitter, I only log on once or twice a day,and get notified of important new items... *by email*
Most modern "smartphones" have a facebook app, and a lot of people these days have unlimited SMS that they can use with twitter. Between those two (facebook and twitter) popping up in my blackberry inbox alongside regular email, I'm pretty much "always on". I don't always respond the same day though. That's one reason why I couldn't get rid of my Blackberry for an iPhone - because it consolidates 100% of my messaging (including voice) into a single device. Now that I have google voice, my email is once agai
Email is the killer app. These other thingies are nice niche addons(plugins!?) but they won't replace email.
The only major nuisance to email is slight visual noise. (I DON'T count spam! I mean legit notes.) It might be nice to have a 1-click "you have a phone call" for the frontline admins. But darn near EVERYTHING else gains value from being logged.
Anyone who thinks they can super-promote twitter-clones is forgetting the lovely CYA bit.
Having to deal with everything I get via SMS/IM instead of email is pretty close to my idea of the lowest ring of hell. There is no way Dante could have ever dreamed up a torture so hideous and cruel.
I'm in agreement with this as well. I'm so tired of
businesses and employers thinking that I always
want to be 'on'. This is their desire and dream.
This is why I'm more protective of my time and privacy. Once you are leashed by today's technology, it become very hard to rid yourself of that shackle.
"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
Multiple social networking sites linked to one email address, that's how.
If you don't bother linking the two together, it's really easy to get numbers like this. It's called "really poor statistics with unreliable research and no insight into your topic". It's all the rage these days.
i find google wave rather annoying. maybe because too few of my friends are on it, maybe because it's a whole new way of "emailing." maybe because it's not meant as a communication tool but rather as a collaboration tool. Either way, I don't see it replacing email anytime soon. or ever.
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.
... things like Facebook and Google Wave is that surely not everybody subscribes to them. I certainly don't want a million different accounts, and nor will bother with Google Wave. Everybody has email though.
Only a few months ago did I manage to explain how email works to my parents (and what the purpose of email is).
Somehow, I don't think I'll see my father on facebook any time soon, and just the thought of my mother using Google Wave makes me chuckle.
I seriously doubt e-mail is being replaced anytime soon. There are a lot of companies having issues with in-the-cloud spam filtering for email, I just cannot see them accepting the loss of control of their data by moving to Google Wave.
I don't subscribe to Facebook and Twitter, and I feel pretty confident in saying that I never will. Facebook would be just one more web site I have to visit, and Twitter... I can't even imagine a use for it in my life.
There's a very subtle hide link next to them, you can remove all status messages related to specific games. It went away when they redesigned recently but it seems to be back again.
The article doesn't mention a major advantage of "legacy" e-mail - it's a standard that isn't tied to any particular company.
Facebook, Google, Twitter, whatever, are "single-source vendors" of their particular products, and they can be subject to any kind of financial, moral, political, or technological problems.
E-mail has no such dependencies. The only way to take it down is to take down the Internet in general. (Spam overloading aside.)
E-mail has no such dependencies. The only way to take it down is to take down the Internet in general. (Spam overloading aside.)
And even then it's quite trivial to set up small networks using UUCP or SMTP to get email going again...
Anyway, the major reason that email isn't getting the attention it deserves (other than by spammers) is the fact that it's very hard to make money from it. It's somewhat like a free service available to all and the companies living off the net are too eager to have it fallen by the wayside and to have you use other services they *can* exploit and lock you in.
It's the same with mailing lists and usenet being replaced by a myriad of different blogs and forums. A few years ago I was able to read and participate in dozens of lists and newsgroups investing maybe half an hour a day. Now keeping track of a similar diversitude of blog articles and comment threads and forums and RSS feeds and Twitters and whatnot would require me to be on it full-time. It's madness.
To be fair, Wave is being developed as an open standard. Google is opening the protocol. They will also maintain an open source reference implementation for anyone to deploy in their own corner of the 'net.
How is this different from Wave? Google may have put together the standard, but anyone can create their own Wave server with 0 ties to google. Its designed to be a replacement for SMTP in every way, including its non-reliance on a central authority.
i'll put my hands up and say i've not read the article - and i'll certainly not be wasting my time doing so.
but is anyone really so stupid to think that email (which is based upon open standards and is already running on hundreds of thousands of servers and comes installed by default on most servers) will ever be replaced by fecebook and twatter???
a few years ago i guess the same idiots would also be including myspaz on that list too? (and what is next years fad?)
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 w
In related news, Nemertes President Johna Till Johnson is still convinced that the internet will meet its end [arstechnica.com] by 2010. Back in 2007 they claimed that the "exponential" growth in demand for bandwidth will butt up against the "linear" investment in networking technology causing brownouts and no internet by 2010. And as recently as May of 2009, they have been still saying this! Then in October 1st the same company claimed that Net Neutrality will end the internet (or at least as we know it). Which causes me to wonder... what kind of business model is Nemertes running? Do they stand to profit from this FUD or establish themselves as expert prophets if one of these things happens?
Really, the biggest question is... why would the WSJ throw their journalistic integrity on the line for this kind of news? What did they gain at the risk of look like Popular Mechanics who in 1951 speculated we would all have personal helicopters in our garage [berkeley.edu]?
Would you trust Facebook, with its odd history of rights control, with a corporate Excel file?
Hell no. I wouldn't even trust Facebook to reassure my mother about a doctor's visit, or talk to my brother about his family. It's creepy the things people use social networking tools for, sometimes. It's like going down to the local bar and yelling out the results of your blood tests to whatever yobboes happened to be in earshot.
Yes, technically, email can be intercepted. So can phone calls and physical letters. And someone can be listening in on you in the restaurant, even if you keep your voice down. But... damn...
I tried to RTFA (well, not the first one, but the response from Fast Co) and failed. I got as far as:
Twitter's on every tech-fan's lips
(the first five words) and gave up. I'm a tech fan, but Twitter just doesn't interest me as it is. Making communication that short and easy just leads to drivel (or people using Twitter as an RSS feed for their site - I'll watch the site and its real RSS feed, thank you). Threading is hopeless in things like Twitter and while it might be semi-useful for faster conversations, it won't be as good as a proper IM client for a group chat.
approach to replacing email. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can still use the service, so it has no benefit over email. ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected ( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money (X) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it (X) Users of email will not put up with it (X) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once (X) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists (X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it (X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for messaging ( ) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses ( ) Asshats (X) Jurisdictional problems ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money (X) Huge existing software investment in SMTP (X) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email ( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches ( ) Extreme profitability of spam (X) Joe jobs and/or identity theft (X) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers ( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering ( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck ( ) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually ( ) Sending email should be free (X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? (X) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome (X) I don't want the government reading my email ( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. (X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Someone please send this article to all of the spammers. That way, they'll all move to Fecesbook. I don't have a Fecesbook account, so I don't have to see their spam (for that matter, I'd rather read Viagra ads than "25 Things About Me" pages anyway).
Email isn't going anywhere. Fecesbook is a fad. Everyone has an email account. Email is also (in theory at least) guaranteed delivery.
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.
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).
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.
It's interesting to bring up Facebook here, because, while it does allow us a much better way to communicate with our friends, it also is not an "email killer". In fact, it makes integral use of email. I get emails all the time telling me that someone "commented on my status".
If you want to show people something, but it's not important enough to send an email. Email is better suited to targeted communication, whereas with facebook you can just post inane crap all day and people will ignore it if they aren't interested.
if they care about my correspondence, will have my email folders to look through to learn a bit about those that came before them.
I hardly ever look into my email archive; And I wouldn't think the people coming after me would take the time or effort skimming all those 1000-s of emails...
> We should not get rid of E-mail so much as improve it. E-mail could be easily > improved by adding ideas such as threading which would quite easily overcome > the complicated mess that is quoting.
Everything needed for threading is already there in the "References:" header line and decent MUAs such as Gnus fully support it.
Email already has a threading mechanism, you just need to use a client that supports it. In fact, there are two such mechanisms: In-Reply-To and References headers, either one of which can be used to construct a threaded view. Try using KMail, Evolution, Thunderbird, etc.
Every email has a message ID and points at the email it refers to. Every sane email client under the sun has had threading since ages. It's not that email has a problem here, it's just that many email clients suck.
While most of my computers and my iPhone use the cloud email (Imap). My laptop is set to download it pop style. A script to move them and mark them as read is done. This way ihave the best of both worlds when email fails.
The Right Tool for the Right Job (Score:5, Insightful)
That's all it comes down to.
But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun.
Why wait for a response to an email when you get a quicker answer over instant messaging?
Because you don't always need some response within 15 secs, nor do you want to always be responding to some questions that take away your time and concentration. Even if you have your email client open all the time, you can leave writing a reply to it for later time.
If you know you need a quicker response, you send an IM or call my phone. Something in between and you send an SMS.
For that matter I dont want everyone to know everything about me, I dont want everyone to know I'm available or not, I dont want everyone to know all the other people I know, nor do I want everyone to know something that only certain people should know.There's also no way you'll get me to install facebook or twitter apps on my phone. If I'm not on computer, there's no need to contact me other way than calling me (and I dont even always keep my phone with me - if I'm busy with other stuff, I'll call you back on better time)
Re:The Right Tool for the Right Job (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The Right Tool for the Right Job (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention Facebook and Twitter are totally closed systems. Both you and the recipient need a Facebook account in order to communicate via Facebook. In contrast no one that I exchange email with has the same provider as me.
Email is right there with Phone number and Postal address.
Facebook and Twitter are one the same level as messaging someone through any third party website, many discussion forums have messaging features by default.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually that's the one area where Google Wave might actually be the next evolutionary step after e-mail, while Facebook and Twitter are not even close to being suitable replacements: Server federation and an open protocol specification(namely, XMPP). Allowing me to send a message to anyone@some.org is probably the best thing about e-mail, and it is something that will never be implemented by Facebook, as it goes against their entire business model.
In contrast, Wave has been built around this ability, and
Re:The Right Tool for the Right Job (Score:5, Insightful)
The lack of Farmville updates...
Parent
Re: (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?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Email is useful for formal communication, for a long term record of something -- e.g. for CYA. It is also possible to get some work done by only checking mail at certain points of the day.
IM, Twitter, Facebook etc really are of very limited use in a business situation -- they are slower and clumsier than a phone conversation or face to face. Probably useful in situations where no phone is available (or VOIP for international calls) or for quick mass distributed maessages, but other th
Re: (Score:2)
....Always on? ... My mail is always on, and will notify of new mail instantly ... Facebook and Twitter, I only log on once or twice a day,and get notified of important new items ... *by email*
Re: (Score:2)
Most modern "smartphones" have a facebook app, and a lot of people these days have unlimited SMS that they can use with twitter. Between those two (facebook and twitter) popping up in my blackberry inbox alongside regular email, I'm pretty much "always on". I don't always respond the same day though. That's one reason why I couldn't get rid of my Blackberry for an iPhone - because it consolidates 100% of my messaging (including voice) into a single device. Now that I have google voice, my email is once agai
Niche Tools (Score:4, Insightful)
Email is the killer app. These other thingies are nice niche addons(plugins!?) but they won't replace email.
The only major nuisance to email is slight visual noise. (I DON'T count spam! I mean legit notes.) It might be nice to have a 1-click "you have a phone call" for the frontline admins. But darn near EVERYTHING else gains value from being logged.
Anyone who thinks they can super-promote twitter-clones is forgetting the lovely CYA bit.
Parent
Re:The Right Tool for the Right Job (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:The Right Tool for the Right Job (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why I'm more protective of my time and privacy. Once you are leashed by today's technology, it become very hard to rid yourself of that shackle.
Parent
Re:The Right Tool for the Right Job (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Synchronous Conversation - face-to-face, telephone, IM
2) Asynchronous Mail - snail mail, email, fax, telegraph
3) Broadcasting - mass media, blogging, Twitter, Facebook, Google Wave
The article muddles all three together without recognizing that there's a place for each.
Parent
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.
Yet another misleading title (Score:3, Informative)
The article in question is not saying email is dying. In fact, it says email usage is growing:
> Little wonder that while email continues to grow, other types of communication services are growing far faster.
No, not "dying". Just perhaps not peoples first choice for today's on-line communications.
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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Multiple social networking sites linked to one email address, that's how.
If you don't bother linking the two together, it's really easy to get numbers like this. It's called "really poor statistics with unreliable research and no insight into your topic". It's all the rage these days.
google wave? come on now... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (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
The trouble with... (Score:3, Insightful)
... things like Facebook and Google Wave is that surely not everybody subscribes to them. I certainly don't want a million different accounts, and nor will bother with Google Wave. Everybody has email though.
Re: (Score:2)
Somehow, I don't think I'll see my father on facebook any time soon, and just the thought of my mother using Google Wave makes me chuckle.
I seriously doubt e-mail is being replaced anytime soon. There are a lot of companies having issues with in-the-cloud spam filtering for email, I just cannot see them accepting the loss of control of their data by moving to Google Wave.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't have email yet.
I'm waiting for SMTP over twitter.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't subscribe to Facebook and Twitter, and I feel pretty confident in saying that I never will. Facebook would be just one more web site I have to visit, and Twitter... I can't even imagine a use for it in my life.
Re:Facebook would be more useful... (Score:4, Informative)
There's a very subtle hide link next to them, you can remove all status messages related to specific games. It went away when they redesigned recently but it seems to be back again.
Parent
Another overlooked e-mail strength (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook, Google, Twitter, whatever, are "single-source vendors" of their particular products, and they can be subject to any kind of financial, moral, political, or technological problems.
E-mail has no such dependencies. The only way to take it down is to take down the Internet in general. (Spam overloading aside.)
Re:Another overlooked e-mail strength (Score:5, Insightful)
And even then it's quite trivial to set up small networks using UUCP or SMTP to get email going again...
Anyway, the major reason that email isn't getting the attention it deserves (other than by spammers) is the fact that it's very hard to make money from it. It's somewhat like a free service available to all and the companies living off the net are too eager to have it fallen by the wayside and to have you use other services they *can* exploit and lock you in.
It's the same with mailing lists and usenet being replaced by a myriad of different blogs and forums. A few years ago I was able to read and participate in dozens of lists and newsgroups investing maybe half an hour a day. Now keeping track of a similar diversitude of blog articles and comment threads and forums and RSS feeds and Twitters and whatnot would require me to be on it full-time. It's madness.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
To be fair, Wave is being developed as an open standard. Google is opening the protocol. They will also maintain an open source reference implementation for anyone to deploy in their own corner of the 'net.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I totally agree! (Score:3, Funny)
silly (Score:2, Insightful)
i'll put my hands up and say i've not read the article - and i'll certainly not be wasting my time doing so.
but is anyone really so stupid to think that email (which is based upon open standards and is already running on hundreds of thousands of servers and comes installed by default on most servers) will ever be replaced by fecebook and twatter???
a few years ago i guess the same idiots would also be including myspaz on that list too? (and what is next years fad?)
email dying? pffffft - what a bunch of idiot
Re: (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 w
Those who don't know history (Score:5, Insightful)
So the call is for a collaboration / communication system which works like email but can pull in large groups that has an open standard.
Sounds like a call to bring back and update Usenet.
Re: (Score:2)
Just Like the Internet Dying in 2010 (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, the biggest question is
Corporate data? Not even the start! (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you trust Facebook, with its odd history of rights control, with a corporate Excel file?
Hell no. I wouldn't even trust Facebook to reassure my mother about a doctor's visit, or talk to my brother about his family. It's creepy the things people use social networking tools for, sometimes. It's like going down to the local bar and yelling out the results of your blood tests to whatever yobboes happened to be in earshot.
Yes, technically, email can be intercepted. So can phone calls and physical letters. And someone can be listening in on you in the restaurant, even if you keep your voice down. But... damn...
Tried to RTFA... (Score:5, Insightful)
I tried to RTFA (well, not the first one, but the response from Fast Co) and failed. I got as far as:
(the first five words) and gave up. I'm a tech fan, but Twitter just doesn't interest me as it is. Making communication that short and easy just leads to drivel (or people using Twitter as an RSS feed for their site - I'll watch the site and its real RSS feed, thank you). Threading is hopeless in things like Twitter and while it might be semi-useful for faster conversations, it won't be as good as a proper IM client for a group chat.
Time to Adopt the Spam Form for this: (Score:5, Funny)
Your post advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative (X) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to replacing email. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can still use the service, so it has no benefit over email.
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
(X) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
(X) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(X) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for messaging
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
(X) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(X) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
(X) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
(X) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
(X) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
(X) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
Good. Now leave me alone. (Score:3, Insightful)
Email isn't going anywhere. Fecesbook is a fad. Everyone has an email account. Email is also (in theory at least) guaranteed delivery.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, email is best effort delivery.
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.
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.
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Re:Actually (Score:4, Insightful)
I find that facebook fills a niche.
If you want to show people something, but it's not important enough to send an email.
Email is better suited to targeted communication, whereas with facebook you can just post inane crap all day and people will ignore it if they aren't interested.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
if they care about my correspondence, will have my email folders to look through to learn a bit about those that came before them.
I hardly ever look into my email archive; And I wouldn't think the people coming after me would take the time or effort skimming all those 1000-s of emails ...
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Informative)
> We should not get rid of E-mail so much as improve it. E-mail could be easily
> improved by adding ideas such as threading which would quite easily overcome > the complicated mess that is quoting.
Everything needed for threading is already there in the "References:" header line and decent MUAs such as Gnus fully support it.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Every email has a message ID and points at the email it refers to. Every sane email client under the sun has had threading since ages. It's not that email has a problem here, it's just that many email clients suck.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
While most of my computers and my iPhone use the cloud email (Imap). My laptop is set to download it pop style. A script to move them and mark them as read is done. This way ihave the best of both worlds when email fails.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I modded it flaimbait before, and if I had mod points, I'd do it again.