Email seen only mostly dead. sort of.

Some excellent points Lars, while I myself sometimes take certain (mischievous?) pleasure in declaring various “old” media like email just plain dead, the reality ( if we want to get picky about it) is of course far more subtle.

Better quality and availability of alternative communication mediums (e.g. so-called “social media” – not that that phrase makes as much sense in the business context) really just provides a greater choice in communication options for users/systems/humans/yourdog/cat etc.

Ideally, new mediums just let users select from the available tools those best suited to the job a hand. Which, in a lot of cases, won’t have to be email anymore.

What with the (nearly-alarming) proliferation of social/professional/marketing/media/hobby etc. community sites these days, I have this fear that within a few years 90% of all email (not counting the other 90% which will still be spam) will consist entirely of password reset emails and add-me-to-your-friend/buddy-list confirmation e-mails…

Posted by: Thomas Purves | 12 December 2006 at 14:03 GMT

You can read what argument I was replying to here on Lars Plougmann’s blog cheers. [hint: Lars has another good post in his ongoing conversation on social media killing off email as a useful tool for collaboration (or in this case, if social media like wiki's are really any better or a complete substitute and so forth)]

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