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.
Email is actually a tremendous, decentralized, open platform
Right, because people understand and care about that.
So much that they've flocked by the billions to closed, centralized platforms.
Here's the thought process of most internet users: "Are all my friends doing it?" "Does it have cute pictures of kittens?" YES -> Click on it.
"Open", "decentralized", or "user controlled" don't enter into it at all.
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 the common denominator in electronic communication. Period. Nothing else can match it when it comes to being well known, compatible with everything, and even its flexibility. Spam sucks, and there are still some issues with the way people USE Email (or incorrectly use it), but it is *the* way business communicates now. I would be crippled at work without Email.
If you want to talk about a dying communications technology, that would be facsimile. Our fax volume is a small fraction of what it once was. Still important to have around, but people go out of their way to avoid it now. We have large scan-to-PDF-EMail copiers all over, making it so much more convenient, too.
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.
FFS, is this going to be another breathless article about how corporate email is going out to be replaced by Yammer or some other platform de jour? Because that shit is just a waste of time. When my corporation jumped on the Yammer train (no doubt after a fiery sales pitch by some consultant), I started to see - in my email inbox, ironically - the hourly Yammer feed. It was 95% comprised of threads started by upper management which had zero to do with my day's work and which accreted into long long long posts as middle and junior managers jumped in with witless 'great idea!!!!' comments. You could smell the fecal matter on their noses. The other 5% was actual information passing between business units I had no contact with or interest in. But I am sure that in the next year or so some bright MBA will be sold on the idea of abandoning email and transitioning over to whatever the kids are using that week so that instead of getting actual targeted communications in my inbox I will be deluged with useless bullshit.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
... 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.
no, they say "get in touch with social media" because they want their hooks in you and they want to know who your friends are and they want you to advertise to your friends. it's all commercialism and big brotherism. although NSA saves a copy of all emails exchanged so there's big brother for you as well.
The author is quite confused: email predates the web by decades. It predates the internet.
Exactly. While "kids" may "flock" to whatever is "cool" today, eventually you do have to deal with other adults in structured environments.
With email, usernames can be assigned in a structured fashion. And potentially offensive combinations can be weeded out.
With closed systems, it is usually first-come-first-served from around the world (and that's not counting multiple accounts per person). So you might not be able to get johnsmith. And "sukmahp3n1s" does not work so well when dealing with other companies.
The young ones have already quit using it to communicate with friends.
No they haven't. Facebook was a fad that was growing with young ones until they realized it sucks and its no longer the place they go. They still send email though. Moving to twitter for some things? Sure ... except when they want to keep things private.
Newer businesses use newer protocols like RSS to distribute their news feeds.
RSS has been waning for a while, no one outside the techie community watches RSS feeds.
I'd have already ditched email entirely, except that too many people assume that an email address is something everyone has, and so without one you're a second-class citizen on the internet, barred from participating in online forums and from making online purchases.
And there you've just contradicted every point you were trying to make.
Email is almost dead.
Except that every alternative you've claiming to it ... assumes you use email. Do you not realize how silly that sounds?
I know too many people who, while they have an email account, it really isn't something they check every day.
Me too, but they aren't checking Facebook or twitter every day either.
because it just isn't the best solution for anything it does
Thats about the most ignorant statement I've ever seen.
making it worthless for anything besides communicating with people who haven't yet figured that out
Which would be pretty much everyone else on the planet except fad following teenagers. Once you get out of high school you'll realize how silly you sound.
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