3 ms·

The Enterprise Soft Spot, er, the Enterprise Email Crisis

8 points by bdfh42 18y ago

AlexTheFounder 18y ago
As usual: devil is in the details. We use email because its everywhere, and I doubt that all these 100 people in the editors example will have ZOHO, SocialText or whatever account to access your document. Company-wide it will work, but then there will be a problem of translating all that data in the case of external communication.
bhc3 18y ago
Right now, email continues to be the dominant information distribution app inside companies. One thing about it is that you can make sure something gets to someone else. Attention inside companies is key. The new social apps inside companies are getting better with managing "attention hooks". You get notifications that someone has replied to you, commented on a blog, edited a doc, directed a microblog message to you. Key word RSS brings content to people as well. Long term, email becomes less a primary communications and info sharing app, and more a notification service. Content and conversations are saved and searchable, which doesn't really happen now with the email inbox.
- aaronblohowiak 18y ago
  how are they getting better at managing attention hooks? what techniques are they using that were missing before?
  - bhc3 18y ago
    The email notification is probably the biggest thing. My Gmail account right now primarily consists of notifications. Which gives me comfort that others are seeing these as well. So I know that when I use various social media sites, others will know when I've interacted. Twitter's @reply is another good tool, one that doesn't have the email notification. Without those types of attention hooks, I'd be less likely to use the sites.
Hoff 18y ago
email is used as a conferencing tool, as a group or company bulletin board, a calendar, for documentation and archiving and record keeping, for file transfer, and as an all-around general-purpose data store. Which means that email is used to hide information, to obfuscate schedules, render data inaccessible for local or corporate or legal requirements, and to generally derail the progress of a business. This in addition to its usefulness for malware redistribution, pharmaceutical and other advertisements, lost customer communications, spear-phishing and related tasks. Until the costs of email are recognized and email is off the desktop as a preferred application and the replacement tools are deployed and in use, this mess will continue. But in my experience, the folks that are chartered to make these same decisions can be of the worst offenders with email.

8 points by bdfh42 18y ago

As usual: devil is in the details. We use email because its everywhere, and I doubt that all these 100 people in the editors example will have ZOHO, SocialText or whatever account to access your document. Company-wide it will work, but then there will be a problem of translating all that data in the case of external communication.

bhc3 18y ago

Right now, email continues to be the dominant information distribution app inside companies. One thing about it is that you can make sure something gets to someone else. Attention inside companies is key. The new social apps inside companies are getting better with managing "attention hooks". You get notifications that someone has replied to you, commented on a blog, edited a doc, directed a microblog message to you. Key word RSS brings content to people as well. Long term, email becomes less a primary communications and info sharing app, and more a notification service. Content and conversations are saved and searchable, which doesn't really happen now with the email inbox.

aaronblohowiak 18y ago
how are they getting better at managing attention hooks? what techniques are they using that were missing before?
- bhc3 18y ago
  The email notification is probably the biggest thing. My Gmail account right now primarily consists of notifications. Which gives me comfort that others are seeing these as well. So I know that when I use various social media sites, others will know when I've interacted. Twitter's @reply is another good tool, one that doesn't have the email notification. Without those types of attention hooks, I'd be less likely to use the sites.

Hoff 18y ago

email is used as a conferencing tool, as a group or company bulletin board, a calendar, for documentation and archiving and record keeping, for file transfer, and as an all-around general-purpose data store. Which means that email is used to hide information, to obfuscate schedules, render data inaccessible for local or corporate or legal requirements, and to generally derail the progress of a business. This in addition to its usefulness for malware redistribution, pharmaceutical and other advertisements, lost customer communications, spear-phishing and related tasks. Until the costs of email are recognized and email is off the desktop as a preferred application and the replacement tools are deployed and in use, this mess will continue. But in my experience, the folks that are chartered to make these same decisions can be of the worst offenders with email.