Is personal email dead? - Page 2

kijinbear · 30 Aug 2013, 05:35 PM

How do you sign up with all those fancy social networks and instant messaging apps? Of course, you sign up by giving them your email address.

Without email, you would not be able to sign up with any online service. Without email, you would not be able to prove to anybody that you actually own a particular account on a particular website. Email is almost like your passport. (Not to be confused with Microsoft's ill-fated ".NET Passport" project.)

Why? Because email is the only protocol that is guaranteed to work, no matter which social network you use, no matter what kind of internet connectivity you have, no matter what kind of phone you use. It's the common denominator across all those social networks that aren't compatible with one another. People might not recognize your school ID or work ID, but a passport is always recognized.

Facebook and Twitter will rise and fall, but email will stay exactly where it is for the foreseeable future: quietly laboring away in the darkness, in order to allow everything else to function.

RunboxCustomer · 30 Aug 2013, 09:43 PM

I submit the following...

http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/27/why...n-do-about-it/

kijinbear · 31 Aug 2013, 12:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RunboxCustomer

I submit the following...

http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/27/why...n-do-about-it/

From the article:

Quote:

That’s because email was never meant to be a tangle of folders and labels. It was meant for talking.

In addition, email needs a layer of intelligence that reorganizes messages based on what matters most: people. That means threads should be filtered based on the person, specific groups of people and then everything else (newsletters, subscriptions, etc.).

Nope, no thanks.

I understand that many people like Gmail's "conversation view", but just as many people hate it with a passion. Because not everyone uses email to exchange "conversations". What if I never think of emails as conversations? What if I use my email account almost exclusively for newsletter subscriptions and various notifications?

Likewise, not everyone will be thrilled when their mailbox becomes self-aware and begins to reorganize itself as it sees fit. Because, you know, we humans are also capable of organizing our stuff as we see fit, and some of us have legitimate reasons to create and maintain a folder tree five levels deep.

Please stop trying to turn email into just another specialized social networking protocol. The distinguishing feature of email is that it's not particularly specialized for any narrow use case, least of all social networking. That's exactly what makes email such a versatile general-purpose tool for personal, business, academic, and all sorts of other purposes, even though it might not be the perfect tool for any of those.

zinneken · 31 Aug 2013, 02:26 AM

Wow, didn't expect this many opinions! So many valid points!!

I particularly liked:
kijinbear
Without email, you would not be able to sign up with any online service.

kaptitsky
Instead, we use a wider array of communication techniques to suit out message and audience.
E-mail is only dead to people who believe in oversimplified short messages.

petergh
Come to think of it, Facebook is one of the best spam filters I've ever had the pleasure of using.

webecedarian · 1 Sep 2013, 05:06 AM

I'll agree with Kaptitsky isn't quite dead. In fact, I just heard an expert say solemnly that vinyl records were making a comeback.

The problem is that most people try to make one mode work for everything - starting with people, pre-internet, who preferred making long-distance telephone calls rather than write letters. But different methods are good for different things.

I was struck by your asking, "Are we bound to gradually leaving email behind in order to stay in touch?" If people value you, they should accommodate you, not force you to cater to them.

chrisretusn · 1 Sep 2013, 01:18 PM

It really all depends. For me personal email is alive and well. I use Facebook and SMS, but much of my communication still via email, and I might add snail mail.

Tsunami · 24 Sep 2013, 06:03 AM

I tried Facebook and MySpace out of curiosity 7 years ago and felt so disappointed about it that I stopped using it after a few months. Never regretted that decision. Email is so much better. I like the simplicity of just sending a message to 1 person, and have a dialogue with email, without others suddenly coming into the dialogue and reading it. I even prefer old fashioned email without built in chat options. Email is still nr 1 for me, and it is too for most people I know ; several friends of mine refuse to use the social media (FB, Twitter, etc) too and also prefer to rely on email. So within my circle of friends, it's email all the way, only SMS comes into play now and then but only for urgent messages and when we agreed to meet for an evening in town.

In business, I don't see how email could ever be replaced. Every company I ever worked for/with used email for internal communication and for important communication with befriended companies.

And even for all those who prefer social media : you still need an email address to sign up. Email will be amongst the internet "tools" that will survive the hands of time. I don't believe in gloomy predictions about how email is about to disappear. I think it will survive all social media ; at least as long as registrations online require email addresses it's more or less guaranteed to survive.

William9 · 24 Sep 2013, 07:01 AM

Much of business to customer communications is by email. It's a long way from being dead there. After all, it's only been recent years that email has nearly replaced paper-based postal mail for routine business communications. As others have indicated above, personal communications are moving -- or have moved -- away from email to TXT and social sites. I can imagine a time when some other, more secure means of e-communication, will supersede email for businesses.

transitionality · 30 Jun 2014, 01:37 AM

Email has certainly been deprioritized in the age of free and low cost VoIP, mobile messaging apps and social networks, but until a secure, universal, asynchronous messaging protocol is agreed upon by the entire industry, email will be the fallback method when other methods are unworkable or inconvenient. Regardless of which services two random people may or may not be subscribed to, it is a near-certainty that they both have email accounts. When you can't agree upon some other protocol, email works. Email is the least common denominator.

30 Aug 2013, 05:35 PM	#16
kijinbear Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Mar 2011 Location: ~$ Posts: 652	How do you sign up with all those fancy social networks and instant messaging apps? Of course, you sign up by giving them your email address. Without email, you would not be able to sign up with any online service. Without email, you would not be able to prove to anybody that you actually own a particular account on a particular website. Email is almost like your passport. (Not to be confused with Microsoft's ill-fated ".NET Passport" project.) Why? Because email is the only protocol that is guaranteed to work, no matter which social network you use, no matter what kind of internet connectivity you have, no matter what kind of phone you use. It's the common denominator across all those social networks that aren't compatible with one another. People might not recognize your school ID or work ID, but a passport is always recognized. Facebook and Twitter will rise and fall, but email will stay exactly where it is for the foreseeable future: quietly laboring away in the darkness, in order to allow everything else to function.

30 Aug 2013, 09:43 PM	#17
RunboxCustomer Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Posts: 29	I submit the following... http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/27/why...n-do-about-it/

31 Aug 2013, 02:26 AM	#19
zinneken Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 136	Wow, didn't expect this many opinions! So many valid points!! I particularly liked: kijinbear Without email, you would not be able to sign up with any online service. kaptitsky Instead, we use a wider array of communication techniques to suit out message and audience. E-mail is only dead to people who believe in oversimplified short messages. petergh Come to think of it, Facebook is one of the best spam filters I've ever had the pleasure of using.

1 Sep 2013, 05:06 AM	#20
webecedarian Essential Contributor Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: NYC Posts: 485	I'll agree with Kaptitsky isn't quite dead. In fact, I just heard an expert say solemnly that vinyl records were making a comeback. The problem is that most people try to make one mode work for everything - starting with people, pre-internet, who preferred making long-distance telephone calls rather than write letters. But different methods are good for different things. I was struck by your asking, "Are we bound to gradually leaving email behind in order to stay in touch?" If people value you, they should accommodate you, not force you to cater to them.

1 Sep 2013, 01:18 PM	#21
chrisretusn Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Philippines Posts: 846	It really all depends. For me personal email is alive and well. I use Facebook and SMS, but much of my communication still via email, and I might add snail mail.

24 Sep 2013, 06:03 AM	#22
Tsunami The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: in between the bright lights and the far unlit unknown Posts: 2,341	I tried Facebook and MySpace out of curiosity 7 years ago and felt so disappointed about it that I stopped using it after a few months. Never regretted that decision. Email is so much better. I like the simplicity of just sending a message to 1 person, and have a dialogue with email, without others suddenly coming into the dialogue and reading it. I even prefer old fashioned email without built in chat options. Email is still nr 1 for me, and it is too for most people I know ; several friends of mine refuse to use the social media (FB, Twitter, etc) too and also prefer to rely on email. So within my circle of friends, it's email all the way, only SMS comes into play now and then but only for urgent messages and when we agreed to meet for an evening in town. In business, I don't see how email could ever be replaced. Every company I ever worked for/with used email for internal communication and for important communication with befriended companies. And even for all those who prefer social media : you still need an email address to sign up. Email will be amongst the internet "tools" that will survive the hands of time. I don't believe in gloomy predictions about how email is about to disappear. I think it will survive all social media ; at least as long as registrations online require email addresses it's more or less guaranteed to survive.

24 Sep 2013, 07:01 AM	#23
William9 The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: San Francisco Posts: 2,281	Much of business to customer communications is by email. It's a long way from being dead there. After all, it's only been recent years that email has nearly replaced paper-based postal mail for routine business communications. As others have indicated above, personal communications are moving -- or have moved -- away from email to TXT and social sites. I can imagine a time when some other, more secure means of e-communication, will supersede email for businesses.

30 Jun 2014, 01:37 AM	#24
transitionality Member Join Date: Jun 2014 Posts: 30	Email has certainly been deprioritized in the age of free and low cost VoIP, mobile messaging apps and social networks, but until a secure, universal, asynchronous messaging protocol is agreed upon by the entire industry, email will be the fallback method when other methods are unworkable or inconvenient. Regardless of which services two random people may or may not be subscribed to, it is a near-certainty that they both have email accounts. When you can't agree upon some other protocol, email works. Email is the least common denominator.