November 15th, 2007
Email Is NOT Dead
The death of email meme is completely absurd. Email is NOT going to die because, as Charlie O’Donnell points out, EVERYONE HAS EMAIL. That’s why we all get so much spam and other useless email — because it’s a guaranteed way to reach us.
Inboxes are getting flooded by email from other online communication services like Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, etc. because EVERYONE HAS EMAIL — it’s the only truly universal form of online communication. So much so that all of these web services have to use it as a proxy.
In fact, the proliferation of non-interoperable web communication services (i.e. Facebook vs. MySapce, IM vs. IM, Twitter vs. Pownce) ensures that email will not die any time soon. Just like Skype didn’t kill the phone number — not every is on Skype, but everyone has a phone number.
Until you graduate from college, the only communications that really matter are from your friends, so you can use any new fangled platform that every agrees to adopt. Once you graduate from college, email takes over because EVERYONE HAS EMAIL. The teenagers who were using IM when email’s death was first predicted are now in their late twenties — we can resurrect this meme over and over, but it ain’t gonna happen.
Thomas Hawk bemoans all the useless email he gets, but that only demonstrates the power of email. If he dumped email and started doing all his communication through Facebook or Pownce or whatever, you can be sure the spam and communications he doesn’t have time to answer would follow him.
Email is just the messanger — and a damn effective one.
Topics: Hype | Social Networking | Web 2.0
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I like your story. I completely agree with your points. I originally read Thomas Hawk’s story and I thought it was not very realistic. I do have to agree that I cannot get my kids to use email. Myspace has its limitations in that you cannot send files. Anyway, good post.
Paul
Thomas Hawk calls himself a “digital media enthusiast” and he declares email dead? Its got to be a publicity stunt.
Email is as powerful as ever. The email newsletter still trums RSS.
Wait — *who* has email?
@Tony, what fun would blogging be if you couldn’t over-emphasize the obvious in all caps?
@Scott — ha ha! You are preaching to the _CONVERTED_, Scott!
My email activity has gone down 80% in the last two years. Most email just never gets addressed. I’m hoping that the remaining 20% use gets eliminated over the course of the next few years.
Sending an email is simply too easy. Spam won’t overtake social networks to the extent that it has email because social networks have more to lose. If Facebook becomes a haven for spam then people will switch to something else and it will cost them. They have an economic interest to stop spam on their site. Nobody has an economic interest to stop spam in my inbox — or at least a serious enough economic interest to do anything about it.
Mention spam and people say that they can’t do anything about it. That it’s all people in Russia and China, etc. But make it harder to email. Require registration on a service with an opt in model that makes it harder to send 100,000 spam email messages at once and it will be more effective.
The thing with the youth is that every day there are more and more of them while every day there are less and less of the rest of us.
Email will still be around, but it will be significantly less relevant in the future as other better forms of communication evolve and develop.
True — but everyone also HATES EMAIL
[…] My friend Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 says that he thinks the whole “email is dead” meme is ridiculous. […]
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The big joke is that it’s “the kids” who are routinely rolled out as Exhibit No. 1 on how Email is dead.
Then you find out that all they’ve got to communicate with all day long is a cell-phone. Is it any wonder they text-message?
It’s all they got!
When they finally make the switch from cell-phone to smart phone, they’ll be back emailing like the rest of us.
Scott, you are right. There is no way email is going to die so soon. Also, when people talk about a “closed system” replacing an “open system” like email, it amuses me. The main reason why email was successful in the business community is because anyone can contact you through email (an “open system”) much like the postal mail or telephone. Twitter, Facebook, IMs (”closed systems” where one needs to get approved before they could even communicate) may replace email to a certain extent. Such “closed systems” cannot kill email. If at all email is getting killed, it will be done only by another “open system” that can perform better than email.
So your point is that trends that start out in a new generation aren’t really trends because when those teens reach their twenties their learned behavior is overwhelmed by the behavior of the last generation?
Good theory.
I can’t email my 14 year old daughter because she doesn’t use email. She also doesn’t have a phone in her room (the teenage cliche of the last-last generation).
That’s not going to change when she graduates college.
That’s why all those damned new-fangled computers never made it into the business world — all those IBM Selectrics!
Nonsensical.
[…] Email Is NOT DeadJust in case you were asking. […]
You’re right on the mark. The ubiquity of e-mail vs. Twitter, Facebook, et al is why is will continue to rule the roost.
[…] Email Is NOT Dead - Publishing 2.0 EVERYONE HAS EMAIL. That’s why we all get so much spam and other useless email — because it’s a guaranteed way to reach us. (tags: hl) […]
Scott -
AMEN! Its completely absurd. Email is the DRIVER, the connector, and whether people want to believe it or not, its role is shifting and becoming more important than ever. This is in regards to it as a marketing medium as well as a social medium.
Email is the currency of all accounts for all of these other services, and isn’t going anywhere
Thanks for your post.
- Greg
E-mail is not dead, but it does have a few fundamental flaws that need correction. I have written a few times about this. Given the overhyped reactions to Facebook, I never really understood why Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft haven’t fundamentally improved email yet. They already have the user base, so that is covered. When looking at e-mail from a user perspective, it becomes easy to think of (social) improvements for it.
If interested, I wrote 9 requests (post got too long)to improve e-mail. some of these might actually get implemented now I hope:
http://vanelsas.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/dear-yahoo-microsoft-google-e-mail-forget-facebook-start-innovating/
[…] Scott Karp says, “Email Is NOT Dead”: Inboxes are getting flooded by email from other online communication services like Facebook, […]
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