Reports Of Email’s Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Megalith

Megalith

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With all the novel (instant) messaging solutions out there, email is slowly but surely dying, right? Not quite—the charm of email, while seemingly antiquated, is that it is universal. If anything, email is only evolving, which poses an interesting challenge like any system with billions of users.

David Robinson, Yahoo’s vice president of design for Flickr, Messaging, and Mail…believes that email is the the primary communication channel between individuals, businesses, and groups. “As messaging busts, it’s the system that remains relevant,” he said. But he acknowledges that the user experience with email is always changing. Improving email clients requires more meticulous effort than updating messaging apps because the changes have far-reaching implications that can’t easily be solved. “You have to take into account the context, such as the message type (e.g. what are you doing?), the location (e.g. where are you?), and how you’re reading the message. It introduces complexity of design that’s crazy,” he explained.
 
depending on what I'm doing in a given day, my work inbox gets between 200-400 emails in an 8 hour shift, at it's peak about one every 30 seconds. When people start IM'ing me to ask on something, my response is "Is it in my inbox? No? Email me and I will respond when I get to it."
 
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Same here. If you need something from me, send me an email... (Unless it's "My Email isn't working")

Main problem with email is all the spam, viruses and other garbage.
I already filter out over 90% of the incoming emails, yet too much still gets through.
 
My boss sends me emails and hangouts messages. Guess which ones I can easily sort and search, and which ones vanish after an arbitrary amount of time?
 
Email is "seemingly antiquated"? Since when?


I find it far superior to other chat and social media based collaboration tools.

nutzo said:
Same here. If you need something from me, send me an email... (Unless it's "My Email isn't working")

Main problem with email is all the spam, viruses and other garbage.
I already filter out over 90% of the incoming emails, yet too much still gets through.
Click to expand...

Agreed.

Once something is in my email it is logged, is in my "to do" queue and I will get to it.

If it is not in my email, it will likely get missed.
 
as somebody who designs, sells, and implements IT solutions for fortune 500 and gov, ive literally NEVER heard of somebody say email is dying. maybe if you're taking selfies in yoga pants its not entirely necessary for your lifestyle, but for those of us with shit to do, it's not going anywhere anytime soon.
 
I hear a similar story from the lunkheads at work and the kids; that email is 'so last century'. Makes me wonder if they actually do anything other than text each other all day. When I'm at work I don't want people sending me BS messages all day long. If they really need me right away, call. All others, email. Way too many people today live with an artificial sense of urgency and are in a rush for everyone else to do stuff for them right away, for no other reason than 'I WANT IT NOW!'.
 
My business card, any those I get from others magically all have email addresses. Someone needs to tell all the businesses the news!
 
It's not that e-mail is charming. It's because e-mail is an open protocol that everyone can use. It comes from a different time of the internet when it was about connecting everyone to everyone else, not about having more users on your particular system. E-mail is basically the only universal way to get messages to other people. You can't send a message from Google+ to someone on facebook but you could send a message from gmail to a facebook e-mail address. E-mail is from a different mindset, while facebook (and all the others) wants to be the next aol where it's the only place you go on the internet, e-mail remains available to all.
 
At least with email I know a person has put half an ounce of effort into connecting with me. Txt messages and so on all seem to carry an unspoken demand for instant attention, and usually purely for the sender's gratification. I didn't reply because "How r u?" is just another inane conversation I don't want to have.
 
Eh, I don't text or IM, just too much of a distraction when I'm working. If it's something that needs an immediate response, call, otherwise wait until I decide to check my emails (about once an hour).
 
The original post has the right of it - one of email's strengths is its universal, federated, open nature/spec. Especially in an age when we're giving more control to monolithic, proprietary "cloud' based services (ie Facebook) , Email is an important bastion for those who care about privacy, as well as ease of use and compatibility.

If your boss / relative etc... is using anything from Gmail to an old AOL account, you can still communicate with them with ease from your self-hosted or privacy/openness focused mail provider (ie ProtonMail, Tutanota, KolabNow etc). Want to use a stand-alone IMAP client like Thunderbird? Sure! Want to add GnuPG encryption to the message? Done! (though admittedly, the reader will need the software to decrypt it, though it is easily adnd freely available). Have your own domain? Okay, cool. Email allows a wealth of options. While there are some IM services that can offer a few of these features (ie Jabber/XMPP comes to mind as open and federated) overall Email is still one of the best tools we have and I am suspicious of any that are trying to rush it out the door in favor of the shiny-of-the-month top-down solution.
 
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