Slashdot Mirror
Email Is Not Going Anywhere
An anonymous reader writes: It seems the latest trend sweeping the online world is the idea that email is on its way out. Kids are eschewing email for any of the hundreds of different instant messaging services, and startups are targeting email as a system they can "disrupt." Alexis C. Madrigal argues that attempts to move past email are shortsighted and faddish, as none of the alternatives give as much power to the user. "Email is actually a tremendous, decentralized, open platform on which new, innovative things can and have been built. In that way, email represents a different model from the closed ecosystems we see proliferating across our computers and devices. Email is a refugee from the open, interoperable, less-controlled 'web we lost.' It's an exciting landscape of freedom amidst the walled gardens of social networking and messaging services." Madrigal does believe that email will gradually lose some of its current uses as new technologies spring up and mature, but the core functionality is here to stay.
Only because "they" are idiots (both students and faculty apperently). An autoresponder that tweets back "Dear idiot student. It's called email. We use it for a reason. Use it or don't expect help." is all that they needed to "employ". Allowing students to dictate the use of inefficient mechanisms rather than teaching them the right way is pretty ironic for a school system that purports to be a University.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Email Is Not Going Anywhere
Duh. Instant messaging and email often serve different purposes and priorities. For example, at work, I don't use IM because *my* time is more important than your time. Email allows me to respond according to my schedule. Call me if something's really important.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
This is not some latest trend. People (mostly clueless tech journalists) have been saying e-mail is going away since ICQ first appeared on the scene. Heck, they may have said it before that, but I first remember the cry of "e-mail is dead" when some tech writer first stumbled upon ICQ. The idea that e-mail is dying is just as stupid now as it was then. E-mail is a standard, e-mail is universally used. How else are you going to activate your IM account or contact a business or notify a wide range of customers about your product updates? E-mail is not going anywhere.
Email is only losing the people we want to lose. You know, the ones who broadcast that joke of the day email every day CCed to everybody they know, or have ever heard of. Now, please just be good and take all that to facebook. Thxbai.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
... the students are moving to Twitter. The article says that at Birmingham University it took a week or two before the administration responded to emails. That problem is not with email, it is with the University's administration.
try them as a business communication tool, email beats them hands down
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
You missed the point I think. AOL, Compuserve and Prodigy used to rule. Now look, it's Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. They'll have their day too then it will be something else after they pass and e-mail will still be here.