Email Is Not Going Anywhere 235
An anonymous reader writes: It seems the latest trend sweeping the online world is the idea that email is on its way out. Kids are eschewing email for any of the hundreds of different instant messaging services, and startups are targeting email as a system they can "disrupt." Alexis C. Madrigal argues that attempts to move past email are shortsighted and faddish, as none of the alternatives give as much power to the user. "Email is actually a tremendous, decentralized, open platform on which new, innovative things can and have been built. In that way, email represents a different model from the closed ecosystems we see proliferating across our computers and devices. Email is a refugee from the open, interoperable, less-controlled 'web we lost.' It's an exciting landscape of freedom amidst the walled gardens of social networking and messaging services." Madrigal does believe that email will gradually lose some of its current uses as new technologies spring up and mature, but the core functionality is here to stay.
Re:serious confusion by the author (Score:3, Interesting)
Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr are, in case you haven't noticed, and it's all but impossible to email most people any more, who prefer to be contacted on Facebook.
Closed centralized platforms are winning. Email is dying.
Cascade of brown noses (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ubiquitous Common Denominator (Score:4, Interesting)
There is still some faxing going on at our office, but the ubiquitousness of easy-to-use scanners means more and more of the documents that we used faxes for are just being sent via email. We won a contract a few years ago and literally had the hundred page document faxed to us, and then we signed and witnessed the back sheet and sent it back via fax. The last amendment was done via email. When even the lawyers are walking away from fax machines, it is definitely a technology on the wane.
E-mail marketing (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm in e-mail marketing.
Wait; not the spam kind, but the kind you have to double opt-in to before recieving only those mails you explicitely want.
The e-mail marketing market has been watching social media (mostly facebook and twitter) with interrest, as it was promissed to be the next big thing for marketeers. As it turns out, social media has already had it's popularity peak and it wasn't very high. People still use e-mail far (talking magnitude-level "far") more than social media.
Not talking about the individuals on twitter tweeting to the whole world whenever they take a shit or eat a meal (preferably not in that order), but about the hundreds of people who don't do that but still communicate with their friends, family, collegues, etcetera. Those are the silent majority.
From a marketing point of view, if you could either spend 1,000$ on e-mail or 100,000$ on twitter, you'd have more success with e-mail.
In hindsight, social media has never even remotely been a thread to e-mail dominance.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Interesting)
At one place I worked they used IM extensively in-house to send messages. It was a bit weird when someone two cubes over messaged you but for quick updates it is more efficient than getting up and disturbing neighbors with a voice conversation.
Re:serious confusion by the author (Score:5, Interesting)
E-mail is not dying, I expect that its growth is not necessarily increasing at the same rate as before, but it's certainly not contracting.
Besides, as has been proven, many technologies don't die off just because new ones are added. At work I still occasionally receive paper intra-office memos that aren't mass-distribution. We still have a FAX machine and routinely use it to both receive and send. We all still have landline telephones at our desks through our private, carrier-grade phone system, and there are only a handful of us that have forwarded our desk phones to our cells. We still send and receive via postal mail, and hell, in some countries one can still send a telegraph that's hand-courier delivered.
Facebook right now is the most popular Compuserve or AOL, or even Myspace. It will fade in time as they make missteps and as peoples' interests change.
Re:serious confusion by the author (Score:5, Interesting)
it's all but impossible to email most people any more
This does not match my experience at all. Everyone has an email address, if you want to contact someone it's the one thing you can ask for that you can be sure will work. Sure, they may email you back to say that they prefer to have chatty conversations on facebook.
Re:serious confusion by the author (Score:5, Interesting)
>Yes, because whenever I look at job postings, they always say: Hit us up on the Facebookz! in the contact information section.
That's because the job postings are posted by older people who grew up in the days of email. Just wait until the 20-somethings are running companies and handling HR.
Yes, generally only mature people are allowed to run companies.
If your prediction was at all plausible then why haven't I seen requests for job applications via MSN Messenger, ICQ etc....?