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Email vs Facebook
The hot web topic of the day seems to be: Is email headed for the graveyard? It was prompted by a Wall Street Journal article titled "Why Email No Longer Rules."
We all still use email, of course. But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet--logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun.
Why wait for a response to an email when you get a quicker answer over instant messaging? Thanks to Facebook, some questions can be answered without asking them. You don't need to ask a friend whether she has left work, if she has updated her public "status" on the site telling the world so. Email, stuck in the era of attachments, seems boring compared to services like Google Wave, currently in test phase, which allows users to share photos by dragging and dropping them from a desktop into a Wave, and to enter comments in near real time.
But around the web there were quick retorts about how wrong the Journal is on this one. From Fast Company:
Email's actually still settling into the public's consciousness and becoming just another tool for digital communication among a range of different tools, each fitting its own niche. In other words, it's absolutely not an "end of an era" for email--it'll be around for ages yet.
And there's a feisty debate in the comments section of the Journal story. A couple of examples:
COMMENT: Email is the most unproductive for managing communications between significant bodies --- it's dreadful when managing a large project, or for that matter any team over 2!
Email inside many businesses is now mostly an abused broadcast mechanism. Far too people use it to promote themselves to their superiors by cc'ing everyone. Far too many people sit behind their PC and send bursts out harming productivity. And this leave the recipients with an inbox of hundreds of items, and a lot of stress...
COMMENT: Let me get this right. One of the most emailed letters in the WSJ is an article proclaiming the death of email?
Good one. The fact that many companies don't allow the use of Facebook, Twitter, etc seems to punch a huge hole in the Journal's argument. On the other hand, people who dismiss those platforms or blogs as fads and useless in a business setting aren't paying close enough attention.
I'm curious what you think. Will Outlook go the way of Netscape? What trends are you seeing at work?
One reason why e-mail is better comes from our company's IT manager: IM's and social networking do not have the "paper trail" that e-mail does and thus becomes less reliable as evidence in court. E-mail, on the other hand, has now become well established in courts as evidence. At our company we use e-mail as our primary means of recording decisions being made throughout the course of a project. Anyone thinking that Facebook would replace this invaluable tool is spending too much time acquiring Facebook friends.
It's comparing apples to oranges. Email provides very specific information to very specific people or lists. It's meant to convey information directly, point to point. Social media sites are more like general postings -- specialized websites, with some messaging capabilities. This is a disinteremediation example. See futurist Paul Saffo's essay on the concept, http://bit.ly/WAEm.
On this Columbus Day, I have a decent example of e-mail versus other forms of communication at work:
My company, a subsidiary of HP, does not have an official holiday today, but many of my co-workers who have kids are working from home. We have various shared drives that our computers can access from anywhere via VPN, but the connection can be slow. One co-worker was having trouble editing a few large files, so she called me to explain what she needed, but she e-mailed me the list of file locations, and when I was finished I e-mailed her and the QC person with the list of edits I had made.
We also have a chat program at work, so that helps us to move one-on-one conversations out of the e-mail box; I definitely get the "broadcast" function that e-mail has often been relegated to, as we get multiple e-mails daily from "on high" to let us know about various info that applies to everyone (or so they think). I experienced it at my previous job, but at this job I haven't seen the abuse of people CC'ing lots of people inappropriately, but there's still an inordinate volume of e-mail that could definitely be more efficient in a different form. However, I definitely don't think e-mail will go the way of the dodo any time soon, as it's still vital for certain kinds of business communication. I agree with Fast Company that it still fills a unique niche, even if some functionality that used to be encompassed by e-mail is now better served by other communication tools.
Good input, Meredith. I've noticed a lot of people using Facebook as a sub for email in terms of personal or semi-personal communication. For example, people will respond to one of my blog posts not in the comment section here but on Facebook. But for communication within companies, clearly Facebook and the like are no substitute for the "privacy" of email, as dicey as that privacy might actually be.
OR, you can combine both e-mail and facebook: http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/10/15/inbox2-one-inbox-to-rule-them-all-vi...
I don't belive Facebook will replacing Email where I work. Besides being blocked, insurance is a rather "suit and tie" kind of business. Facebook is good for artist, movies, video games and the like. I can't really see many people getting excited over friending their insurance provider or the IRS. Just seems rather anti-Facebook. One more point, how professional would you seem if another business was looking at buying your services to find out that you can reached on Facebook or Myspace? For now those kind of sites have a stigma attached of a t-shirt and jeans kind of job. If that stigma can go away there might be a time that might truly would be a viable option for companies looking to expand.
