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Yes, You've Still Got Mail (recode.net)

Posted by msmash on from the never-die dept.

Veteran technology columnist Walt Mossberg, writes: Like radio, email isn't dying, it's just changing. Over the past decade or so it's become much more like postal mail. It's not the place you expect to find a greeting from a friend or even a timely update from a professional colleague. Instead, it's a mix of junk mail you hate and discard, plus bills and missives from businesses you also hate but can't discard. [...] Still, despite all signs to the contrary -- and many predictions -- email is not dead. In fact, some analyses suggest that it's growing. Few people can afford to be without it. It hasn't expired; it has morphed. There are lots of reasons email persists, even as faster and simpler forms of communication proliferate and your personal communications likely have mostly migrated elsewhere. But one big one is that new types of media channels rarely totally kill off old ones, even though everyone predicts they will. The old ones just adapt and change. Back in the day, television was supposed to kill off radio, but radio gradually saved itself by dropping the programming TV did better (like dramas and variety shows) and starting to focus on playing hit songs and hosting political and sports talk shows. I think something similar is going on with email. Once the king of digital discourse, email has surely been dethroned by an army of alternatives: Vast and numerous messaging services; photo- and video-oriented sharing on social networks or the photo apps of Apple and Google; business tools like Slack. I get the latest pictures of my granddaughter through iCloud photo sharing. I get the latest discussions of how we plan to cover stories on The Verge or Recode through Slack. My editor and I collaboratively edit my stories inside Google Docs. Ten years ago, all those things would have been done via email. Back then, when a reader wanted to tell me I was an idiot (or worse) for something I wrote, I got an email. Now, they tell me on Twitter.

3 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Most of the alternatives he describes... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ... are specialized, i.e., to see photos, I have to go to this site or run this app; to communicate, I have to visit this other site or run this other app, etc.

    .
    The reason why email isn't dying is that it is general purpose and enduring, and does not seem to require to the latest internet fad app in order to work.

    1. Re:Most of the alternatives he describes... by Deep+Esophagus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The general purpose nature of email is a bit reason I still use it extensively. Also...

      • * Not limited to 140 characters
      • * Better handling of conversation threads
      • * Better at handling mixed media (audio, photos, PDFs, office documents all attached to a single message)
      • * More control over formatting
      • * Easier to organize, archive, and search for past conversations

      I'm a member of a group that works together doing voiceover and audio book projects, and the guy running the show uses not just facebook but specifically the Messenger feature within Facebook for all our discussions and planning. The result is that there's a single chat window going back three months containing every conversation we ever had without any search capability, sample clips attached with no way to save them to an external device (you can only play them back within Messenger), and don't even get me started about the animated GIFs that I have to see over and over again whenever I open that chat pane.

  2. Show of hands by uCallHimDrJ0NES · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How many Slashdotters have ever believed email was dying?

    --
    Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.