E-mail's demise has been exaggerated many times
over…
How many times has the death knell been sounded for
e-mail?
As one of the earliest, and humblest, internet technologies that
has been around since the 1970s, it has supposedly been in dire
peril from many new forms of electronic communication: instant
messaging in the early 2000s, Skype from 2005, social networks from
2007 and now Facebook messaging.
On top of the threat from these competing technologies, e-mail
faces an internal enemy. It remains the primary vehicle for one of
the internet's most loathed developments - spam messaging - that
leaves many of us with feelings of 'inbox dread'.
But despite all these developments, e-mail still refuses to give
up and die. Our Bristol IT support
clients still use it as the backbone of their working lives, as do
we.
Why the enduring popularity? Ask the attendees at the recent San
Francisco conference, "Inbox Love". Judging by the topics
discussed, a whole range of technologies and sentiments are coming
together to keep e-mail alive…
Desktop widgets are popping up to help users
access their inboxes without having to open bulky, multi-featured
mail clients.
Inbox tools are popping up, such as Xobni for
Microsoft Outlook, to help users organise and search their e-mail
and draw on the bulk of data it generates.
Attachments are still a crucial piece of
the jigsaw: no other messaging technique has solved the problem (of
how to send each other all kinds of files) well enough to gain
significant ground on e-mail as the business communication medium
of choice.
And if you're looking for clues as to the longevity of e-mail,
that last point is a heavy hitter. Although other services may be
faster, or less spam-prone, or more social, e-mail still replaces
thousands of tonnes of physical mail every business day, all the
while allowing communication that's both rapid and
asynchronous.
Since the inbox hasn't quite killed off the letterbox in 30
years, perhaps those conference-goers are right in feeling nothing
is going to kill off the inbox just yet.
