Why Does Everyone Keep Saying That Web Based Email Is on Its Way Out?

When the media latches on an idea, there's no stopping them. At some point in the past year, some bright IT reporter, perhaps inspired by what Mark Zuckerberg said at the Facebook conference announcing Facebook's messaging system about how young people these days found e-mail just too long-winded and cumbersome, began to report that e-mail was on its way out. The reports of course certainly had a few arguments that made sense (the reports wouldn't be in the news if they had no arguments to make). They were that e-mail, more and more, was viewed over a smart phone that just didn't have the room for advertising; if there was no advertising, why would Microsoft and Google want to keep spending money to support the free e-mail system? And then of course was the argument that the major web based e-mail services were reporting far fewer new sign-ups each year when compared to the previous ones. The truth though is that all of that was merely to sensationalize a few scraps of information that barely made a trend. The truth is that e-mail is firmly on top of the communications pyramid today, right alongside cell phone calling and messaging.

One of the most popular ways people have of running down e-mail today is to say that the social networks are now taking the place of e-mail as the primary way by which we communicate. That's hardly an accurate interpretation of what actually goes on. The social networks really are trying to usurp the place that web-based e-mail has traditionally taken for granted; but they only do it by trying to replace it with their own systems of e-mail that work within their networks. It isn't so much of technological change as it is a marketing change. Unified e-mail addressing might disappear, giving way to a system where e-mail needs to originate in and within closed systems; but e-mail it still would be. If you ignore the commercial goings-on that happen to carry the system, e-mail will continue to be e-mail, whatever form it is used in. No one is going to give up web-based e-mail to favor the social media any more than they are giving up telephones just because it's more than 100 years old. New technologies like these don't turn existing ones obsolete; they merely allow them to find a new place for themselves.

What kind of new place might web-based e-mail find for itself today? Consider the way people relate to the social media and instant messaging. These are communications tools that are always pulling at the sleeve of a person who's trying to work in an office environment. And that is hardly something that makes for easy productivity. If you are on Facebook and you keep getting pinged by someone who doesn't really matter, how much of a needless distraction is that? E-mail isn't something that constantly draws attention to itself; and that is a great productivity convenience.

And anyway, how exactly are businesses supposed to use social networking e-mail to communicate among themselves and with their customers? Are we supposed to all get on Facebook and actually cut down on our options? How could it be a good idea to hand over all of our communications to one company? That would be very anti-competitive.


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