It isn't broken and it doesn't need replacing. There are two main sources of the "email is broken" meme. The first came from the snail mail industry, partly in

It isn't broken and it doesn't need replacing. There are two main sources of the "email is broken" meme. The first came from the snail mail industry, partly in cahoots with the big telco's. The snail mail industry of course quite rightly identified email as a competitor that completely undermined their business, and the telco's saw an opportunity to charge for more than just the bare wires. Verified and most importantly paid email was touted as the solution for spam, but it was really all about money. The second source are the post dot-com bust social media generation of start-ups, who recognize that killing an open standard and replacing it with a proprietary communication protocol can be highly profitable. They've already managed to reduce several protocols to small niches (IRC, Usenet), but SMTP is the big prize. Just imagine being the company the whole world uses for their next generation email. Of course for any of that to happen people have to believe email is broken. So next time you read that "email is broken", I suggest you follow the money. There's always someone behind it looking to profit from it.