In Korea email use has been on the decline since 2004, in the US email amoung teens and young adults is down 8%. The reason? Children are comparing email to instant messenger and calling it 'snail email'.Over the past two years, email has been increasingly bypassed in favor of simpler forms of communication. According to Alex Iskold "The increasing speed of our lives and global connectivity reduces the need for lengthy emails. If we're in touch more often, then we reveal less every time we talk". Shorter, more frequent exchanges are replacing the lengthier communication of the past. "The rise of services such as Twitter and in-house company wikis or databases (such as BaseCamp) means that businesses are not only looking for easier, more accessible means of communication, but also are looking to embrace web 2.0 technology as a means to better position themselves to succeed in a rapidly changing business environment". Iskold admits that email isn't going anywhere soon, but insists that its "days of unquestioned dominance are over". I know personally Instant Messenger plays an important role in taming email, but it still feel like if this is going to happen it's going to be years before we see signficant shifts. What are your thoughts?
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Interesting post, Aaron. Thanks!
ReplyDeletePersonally I don't believe email will vanish completely for the forseeable future. It does meet a need for communication requiring a written record, and that's why I like the way Google Mail stores messages as conversations, it makes it so easy to follow a thread back and check up on what was written, when, and by whom.
But email is almost always abused and other tools may help reduce that as they provide better methods for some of the functions we need.
People will abuse any kind of software, using a spreadsheet for word processing for example. Blogs and wikis can reduce the use of emailing. Blogs are far better than mailing lists for some purposes. Wikis are better for co-operating and sharing. You're demonstrating excellent use of a blog, anyone wanting to see an internal Unilever wiki at work might try UniWiki (http://uniwiki.unilever.com/uniwiki/).