In Korea, Email Is Only For Old People

_martini_ writes "This short article suggests that, in Korea, email is used only for formal communications, or by older, less tech-saavy generations, while IMs, blogs, and SMS has taken over as the primary means of day to day messages."

Comments

Greasy Kids Stuff

[insensitive claude]

I can understand how IM appeals to kids (regardless of nationality), but I find IM incredibly distracting. I guess it's the natural evolution though. As telephones cut into the postal load, so are chat functions overtaking email.

Re:Greasy Kids Stuff

[segmond]

I hate IM for this reason, I usually tell people I don't have any IM account till I make sure they are not part of the "i am often bored" group. Else, I tend to give them only email. It's amazing how people who can't find the strength to write a 2 line email can write 5000 lines over IM.

Credibility of E-mail?

[tyleroar]

From the article: "Email's efficiency falls in terms of promptness, convenience and credibility," observed Yoo Hyon-ok, president, SK Communications. "With the continuous emergence of new communication means, communication formats will develop further in the future."
How do IMs, blogs or SMS provide any more credibility than E-Mail?

Have to be careful about reading this stuff

[wrinkledshirt]

I love Korea a lot, but it's got some drawbacks, particularly in its journalism and media. The impetus behind this article might have a lot less to do with the actual oncoming death of email and a lot more to do with maintaining a tech-obsessed culture -- much easier to do if you're constantly promoting new toys, which Korea is.

It'd be like a Hollywood tabloid saying that indipendent film is on the way out.

The ebb of email is confirmed by a diminishing trend in pageviews, a tabulation of frequency in service used by email users. Daum Communication, the top email business in the country, saw its email service pageviews fall over 20 percent from 3.9 billion in October last year to 3 billion in October this year. By contrast, with SK Telecom, the nation's No. 1 communication firm, monthly SMS transmissions skyrocketed over 40 percent in October from 2.7 billion instances last October. Cyworld, a representative mini-homepage firm, witnessed its pageviews multiply over 26-fold from 650 million instances in October last year to 17 billion in October this year.

This paragraph, for instance, is as much about corporate branding as it is about giving email stats.

Here too

[comwiz56]

It's like that here (in America) too. Most teenagers in America use AIM, IRC, or MSN more than they email. Reasons for this are pretty simple. IMs (and chat rooms) provide instant communication (this is comparable to a phone call, or talking in the halls), whereas an email is like passing a note. The reader has to read and respond seperately.

And as far as blogs, teens like talking about themselves, so this gives them a place to write about themselves as much as they want. Then anyone who knows how to get to it can read it, so its spread to the masses.

And SMS. Many teens have cellphones, and aren't at their computer 24/7, so an easy way to communicate is to a device that they carry with them all the time.

Meaningless Criticism...

[NoTheory]

Most of the reasons they give for email being shunned for other mediums are pretty flimsy.

I know people who set up their AIM client so that you can't tell whether they're idle, and only respond to messages 10 hours after you've sent them, and i know people who watch their inboxes like obsessive hawks.

as for email being less "fun" than aim... I don't know, i think my gmail account is pretty cool... and conversational for that matter.

This debate is pretty silly, after all, all we're talking about is persistant electronic messaging. In terms of user experience, email and a client like ICQ aren't -drastically- different. Presumably email will get faster and friendlier, and hell, at some point probably may as well be the same as an IM system.

Maybe not just Korea

[matth1jd]

My grandparents prefer e-mail. Why? Because they have always enjoyed writing letters. It was the preferred method of correspondance to people who they couldn't otherwise call on the telephone. E-Mail for them is just a "new fangled" way of writing letters.
If shown Instant Messaging they wouldn't use it as nifty as they think it might be, because it's a paradigm they don't neccesarily buy into.

I would imagine this would apply to many older people. Hell, I even enjoy the eloquence of well written letter.

--J