6 ms·

Why Email isn't Dying

58 points by judegomila 17y ago

tdm911 17y ago
the biggest reason i believe email is not going anywhere is because it is entrenched in corporate life. enterprise moves slowly and to move from email to another system would take longer than it took them to embrace email in the first place (i.e. decades).
chrischen 17y ago
I agree email serves a very important purpose. It's the open standard way of receiving messages between computers. We'll always need a way for people to send each other messages using their computers with an open standard. Email, or whatever its purposes is, will not go away, but it can be improved and adapted to modern needs.
wvenable 17y ago
I don't know very many people who still use email for personal communication. It's all Twitter, Facebook, Skype, or just IM. Even my parents seem to able to navigate Facebook just fine but have considerably more trouble with their email client. While I still use email just as much for business communication, I hardly use it at all for just talking to friends and family.
- pyre 17y ago
  The problem with using data like this is that it's completely anecdotal and self-selecting. When I was in college I could have made the claim that AOL Instant Messenger would become the 'one true' messenger because everyone I knew was on it... while in the rest of the world people were mostly using things like ICQ and/or MSN Messenger. Just because the world around you looks one way doesn't mean it's the same everywhere. Just because a large number of people use and interact with Twitter doesn't mean that everyone does or that everyone even knows what it is for that matter.
  - wvenable 17y ago
    "The problem with using data like this is that it's completely anecdotal and self-selecting." That was the idea. I'm not Wolfram Alpha, I'm a human having a conversation. I didn't make any predictions about the future, I'm just expressing my own personal take on the situation. I'm sure I'm going to get down-modded to hell for this especially since you've been up-modded pretty high for contributing basically nothing. "Just because the world around you looks one way doesn't mean it's the same everywhere." The ironic part about your AOL/ICQ/MSN example is that, like Facebook, there are network effects. I used ICQ pretty much right up until nobody else did. People are communicating by Facebook so much that even though I don't use it much, if I want to be in the loop that is where I need to go. There are 250 million people communicating on Facebook -- clearly there's a lot less need to communicate by email. My own personal experience is that for the average user trying to communicate for non-business means, they get a far better experience from other tools than from email. Now, of course, this all just my personal option. If you want some actual data, you won't find it on hacker news.
eli 17y ago
I don't even think that article needs any response. It's pretty naive. That said, it's a fact that the current generation of teenagers generally don't send personal email and view it as something their parents and teachers use.
- David 17y ago
  As a member of the current generation, I know that I don't often send personal emails. And yes, it's something my parents and teachers use. But I definitely use it to talk to members of the older generation. And anything that's less than personal, in fact. Any sort of business arrangements, anything that's supposed to look professional. In fact, the lack of time constraints on email make it far superior to most newer technologies for anything that requires some thought. Email gives you a chance to (re)consider your argument, idea, or response. And to spellcheck. (Irony: Firefox spellchecker picked up "spellcheck" as incorrect. More irony: "spellchecker" is fine.)
  - albertsun 17y ago
    What current generation are you a member of?
  - chipsy 17y ago
    I've found that as I started corresponding more in the "real world," email took hold as the most important tool I have. When I was a student, less so, because all I used it for was holding passwords, subscribing to a list or two, and occasionally communicating with a teacher. All my friends were always nearby so it wasn't a major issue to just hang out all the time. But since then, everyone I know has moved somewhere else. If you want to seek out a deep long-term conversation and you can't get in physical proximity to do so, email does that quite well. I think mailing lists are a powerful tool as well - they should probably be used more. I hate using Facebook, even though it's valuable as a Rolodex replacement.
    - ErrantX 17y ago
      > as I started corresponding more in the "real world," email took hold as the most important tool I have. Same. The one major benefit (I found) of email is that the other person has no way of finding out when / if your online.
pixcavator 17y ago
Twitter is both orthogonal and parallel to email, nice!
- holygoat 17y ago
  Isn't that possible considering planes in more than two dimensions?
  - gjm11 17y ago
    Not unless either Twitter or email equals zero. (Unless you take "orthogonal" and "parallel" to mean "there's a vector in one and a vector in the other that are orthogonal/parallel".)
    - DrJokepu 17y ago
      If I remember correctly, two lines being both parallel and orthogonal is quite possible in Hyperbolic (Non-Euclidean) Geometry.
      - 10ren 17y ago
        Parallel lines of longitude converge orthogonally at poles.
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  Yeah, I never knew that orthogonal and parallel were synonyms.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
tdewbury 17y ago
I think that emails use just needs to be adjusted taking hints from tools like twitter and facebook make it short and to the point.
- lsc 17y ago
  Terseness can be good sometimes; I have a tendency to write really long emails, even when doing relatively trivial tasks like customer support or dealing with a salestard. The sales people are all, as the kids would say, "Tl;dr" then they present me their standard product. Irritating, as that behavior is trivially replaced by a perl script. On the other hand, conveying actual information is also good sometimes. If someone asks me a sytem administration question and I have a few minutes, they usually get a pretty useful answer. I know several system problems at prgmr.com were solved by a customer because when s/he complained, I gave a full description of the actual problem and the customer was able to help me solve it. So yeah, it depends on what you are doing, and the literacy level (and interest) of the recipient. Email can be short, when appropriate, and learning how to be to the point is a very good skill, but email can also be long and detailed when you need that.
  - tdewbury 17y ago
    Totally agree. Maybe more of the problem is writing skill of the users today need to be improved. I am always getting long winded emails that could have be easily said in a short one or two line email and a well phrased subject line.
nopassrecover 17y ago
The same reason traditional post isn't dead. I still might use IM/facebook for most personal communications but that doesn't mean I stop checking my email address or post box.
albertsun 17y ago
I'm a senior in college right now. Over the past four years it seems email has become more popular in my cohort. When I first started college, a lot of social communication was through IM and Facebook. That's what was used for setting up group outings or dinners or what not. Now, sending group emails has replaced that. Twitter has emerged as a place for idle chatter. And Facebook is now mostly a rolodex or a place to keep in touch with acquaintances and people I talk to less often. But email is the backstop. Every other service feeds my email account, and my email account is where I talk to my most regular contacts.
- josefresco 17y ago
  Just wait until you get into the business world. Before I went pro, I was all IM all the time (I'm old so FB/TW wasn't around) Email is till considered leeding edge for a lot of traditional business, with the phone being the preferred comm tool still. I really wish email was better, threaded, open .. you name it but it just isn't happening. I'm shocked (and pleased) when a client messages me on FB or through TW. Although it always leads to a phone call or email (not to mention face-to-face meeting) when we "get down to it".
  - the_real_r2d2 17y ago
    In the corporate world, e-mail is the king. But it is because there is not anything better. It has a lot of problems and it has a broken model for today standards, but still is the best so far.
  - albertsun 17y ago
    What I was trying to say is that over the past four years email has replaced IM, Facebook and Twitter as the "leading edge" for my social interactions now, even though I'm not in the business world. They were popular, but they're now mostly on the periphery.
jsz0 17y ago
The important thing about all these different services is how you decide to include people. It's more of a real organic social network where some casual friends might be Facebook worthy but have no reason to ever e-mail me personally. Others might not be personal contacts but are interesting enough to warrant a Twitter follow. Some business contacts are people I wouldn't mind IM-ing me outside of work -- others goto a separate IM account I only login to during business hours. Some people have full access.
ilyak 17y ago
Died to what? IM? IM is dying on its own. Whatever Facebook this week? Spare me. Wave? It's too hard. Twitter? How would I fit information in 140 chars and why? Email has no successor technology.
- unalone 17y ago
  Neither IM nor Facebook is dying. Email's not dying either, but your countersuggestions are absurd.
  - ilyak 17y ago
    Didn't say Facebook is dying. Traditional IM is suffering, IMO: Twitter, Social networks and Skype ate its users. And, paradoxically, even Email. Maybe it's just me who use them less and less? No idea.
    - unalone 17y ago
      Huh! If you don't count Skype as IM then I agree with you. That's my primary IM at the moment. But isn't that IM?
      - ilyak 17y ago
        I always thought it's more of a phone thingy?
        unalone 17y ago
        Well, it handles text/audio/video chats. But text chatting is still a big part of it: Right now I'm using it for group work, because it has a great filesharing system. It's very flexible, but I think it still counts under the instant messaging umbrella.
the_real_r2d2 17y ago
E-mail is broken in many ways (not just SPAM and overfilled inboxes) but I think there is not yet anything better. Facebook, twitter, social nets are still in the process to become effective ways of communication. Google Wave seems promising, not as the "the new e-mail" (I think that is just hype) but as a collaborative way of working. IMHO e-mail will be replaced for such a type of tool (similar to Wave) where you will have elements of e-mail, IM, tweets and social networks.
- jvdh 17y ago
  What is so broken about email? (apart from spam)
  - the_real_r2d2 17y ago
    The way that we use it today for example. Many people have inbox full of emails that probably they would not read or attend properly. This is behavioural, not a technical issue but it is an example of why we need other collaborative models. There is a good article about it in the IEEE magazine. In the technical and security side, quite a lot of traffic between SMTP servers is in clear text. Identity is very easy to spoof. And so on ... But as I said, there isn't anything better yet.
    - jvdh 17y ago
      an inbox full of emails that you do not read is a behavorial problem. Not one of email. No amount of twitter, facebook or "email 2.0" is going to fix that. Even though the traffic between SMTP servers is in plaintext, encrypting that traffic does not solve the underlying problem. Trust on the Internet is a very very hard problem that is not going to be solved any time soon.
      - zokier 17y ago
        Trust on the Internet has a solution. SSL with proper CAs. Then the problem atleast shifts from Internet to real world.
jvdh 17y ago
People living in the US really should realise that there is a world outside of the US. Facebook may be the way of communication for american youths, but it is not that entrenched in other countries.
- joubert 17y ago
  How do the "youths" in other countries communicate, besides SMS?
  - jvdh 17y ago
    MSN is widely popular here. And there are lots more social networks besides Facebook. For example, in the Netherlands there's hyves.nl and I'm sure the same is true for other countries.
ErrantX 17y ago
Ultimately Email is a standard communication form. As popular as Facebook and Twitter (et al) are they are technically proprietary. Email isn't dying simply because there is, as yet, no successor.
- zokier 17y ago
  XMPP is open protocol, and has lots of (FOSS) implementations. It could probably be easily extended to do anything email does, and do it better. And it has yet to take over the world
narenrulz 17y ago
someone had to say it.. The future doesn't replace the past. The future complements the past
- lacker 17y ago
  Tell that to the silent movie stars.
JoeAltmaier 17y ago
There's more to it than preference, fad and fashion. Tools get replaced when a better one comes along that transmits messages that exist near the same point in { Fidelity, Latency } space. Telephone calls are pretty high fidelity, zero latency (if they're answered). Snail mail is for high fidelity, high-latency messages (like phone bills). Nobody would snail-mail a lunch invitation any more - too high a latency. And so on. Twitter is lower latency than IM; IM is lower than email. They vary in fidelity (Twitter's 120-char limit). There remain room for a whole menagerie of tools in between, above and below. And these will be eclipsed when higher-fidelity replacements get invented. Btw somebody explain to me why its ok to automatically switch a phone call (low-latency, high-fidelity) to voice mail (abysmal latency, half-duplex crap fidelity)? This really bugs me. I don't set up voice mail because its absolutely the wrong choice - send me an email if you can't get me on the phone, or an IM or pretty much ANYTHING but voice mail.

58 points by judegomila 17y ago

the biggest reason i believe email is not going anywhere is because it is entrenched in corporate life. enterprise moves slowly and to move from email to another system would take longer than it took them to embrace email in the first place (i.e. decades).

chrischen 17y ago

I agree email serves a very important purpose. It's the open standard way of receiving messages between computers. We'll always need a way for people to send each other messages using their computers with an open standard. Email, or whatever its purposes is, will not go away, but it can be improved and adapted to modern needs.

wvenable 17y ago

I don't know very many people who still use email for personal communication. It's all Twitter, Facebook, Skype, or just IM. Even my parents seem to able to navigate Facebook just fine but have considerably more trouble with their email client. While I still use email just as much for business communication, I hardly use it at all for just talking to friends and family.

pyre 17y ago
The problem with using data like this is that it's completely anecdotal and self-selecting. When I was in college I could have made the claim that AOL Instant Messenger would become the 'one true' messenger because everyone I knew was on it... while in the rest of the world people were mostly using things like ICQ and/or MSN Messenger. Just because the world around you looks one way doesn't mean it's the same everywhere. Just because a large number of people use and interact with Twitter doesn't mean that everyone does or that everyone even knows what it is for that matter.
- wvenable 17y ago
  "The problem with using data like this is that it's completely anecdotal and self-selecting." That was the idea. I'm not Wolfram Alpha, I'm a human having a conversation. I didn't make any predictions about the future, I'm just expressing my own personal take on the situation. I'm sure I'm going to get down-modded to hell for this especially since you've been up-modded pretty high for contributing basically nothing. "Just because the world around you looks one way doesn't mean it's the same everywhere." The ironic part about your AOL/ICQ/MSN example is that, like Facebook, there are network effects. I used ICQ pretty much right up until nobody else did. People are communicating by Facebook so much that even though I don't use it much, if I want to be in the loop that is where I need to go. There are 250 million people communicating on Facebook -- clearly there's a lot less need to communicate by email. My own personal experience is that for the average user trying to communicate for non-business means, they get a far better experience from other tools than from email. Now, of course, this all just my personal option. If you want some actual data, you won't find it on hacker news.

eli 17y ago

I don't even think that article needs any response. It's pretty naive. That said, it's a fact that the current generation of teenagers generally don't send personal email and view it as something their parents and teachers use.

David 17y ago
As a member of the current generation, I know that I don't often send personal emails. And yes, it's something my parents and teachers use. But I definitely use it to talk to members of the older generation. And anything that's less than personal, in fact. Any sort of business arrangements, anything that's supposed to look professional. In fact, the lack of time constraints on email make it far superior to most newer technologies for anything that requires some thought. Email gives you a chance to (re)consider your argument, idea, or response. And to spellcheck. (Irony: Firefox spellchecker picked up "spellcheck" as incorrect. More irony: "spellchecker" is fine.)
- albertsun 17y ago
  What current generation are you a member of?
- chipsy 17y ago
  I've found that as I started corresponding more in the "real world," email took hold as the most important tool I have. When I was a student, less so, because all I used it for was holding passwords, subscribing to a list or two, and occasionally communicating with a teacher. All my friends were always nearby so it wasn't a major issue to just hang out all the time. But since then, everyone I know has moved somewhere else. If you want to seek out a deep long-term conversation and you can't get in physical proximity to do so, email does that quite well. I think mailing lists are a powerful tool as well - they should probably be used more. I hate using Facebook, even though it's valuable as a Rolodex replacement.
  - ErrantX 17y ago
    > as I started corresponding more in the "real world," email took hold as the most important tool I have. Same. The one major benefit (I found) of email is that the other person has no way of finding out when / if your online.

pixcavator 17y ago

Twitter is both orthogonal and parallel to email, nice!

holygoat 17y ago
Isn't that possible considering planes in more than two dimensions?
- gjm11 17y ago
  Not unless either Twitter or email equals zero. (Unless you take "orthogonal" and "parallel" to mean "there's a vector in one and a vector in the other that are orthogonal/parallel".)
  - DrJokepu 17y ago
    If I remember correctly, two lines being both parallel and orthogonal is quite possible in Hyperbolic (Non-Euclidean) Geometry.
    - 10ren 17y ago
      Parallel lines of longitude converge orthogonally at poles.
yummyfajitas 17y ago
Yeah, I never knew that orthogonal and parallel were synonyms.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

tdewbury 17y ago

I think that emails use just needs to be adjusted taking hints from tools like twitter and facebook make it short and to the point.

lsc 17y ago
Terseness can be good sometimes; I have a tendency to write really long emails, even when doing relatively trivial tasks like customer support or dealing with a salestard. The sales people are all, as the kids would say, "Tl;dr" then they present me their standard product. Irritating, as that behavior is trivially replaced by a perl script. On the other hand, conveying actual information is also good sometimes. If someone asks me a sytem administration question and I have a few minutes, they usually get a pretty useful answer. I know several system problems at prgmr.com were solved by a customer because when s/he complained, I gave a full description of the actual problem and the customer was able to help me solve it. So yeah, it depends on what you are doing, and the literacy level (and interest) of the recipient. Email can be short, when appropriate, and learning how to be to the point is a very good skill, but email can also be long and detailed when you need that.
- tdewbury 17y ago
  Totally agree. Maybe more of the problem is writing skill of the users today need to be improved. I am always getting long winded emails that could have be easily said in a short one or two line email and a well phrased subject line.

nopassrecover 17y ago

The same reason traditional post isn't dead. I still might use IM/facebook for most personal communications but that doesn't mean I stop checking my email address or post box.

albertsun 17y ago

I'm a senior in college right now. Over the past four years it seems email has become more popular in my cohort. When I first started college, a lot of social communication was through IM and Facebook. That's what was used for setting up group outings or dinners or what not. Now, sending group emails has replaced that. Twitter has emerged as a place for idle chatter. And Facebook is now mostly a rolodex or a place to keep in touch with acquaintances and people I talk to less often. But email is the backstop. Every other service feeds my email account, and my email account is where I talk to my most regular contacts.

josefresco 17y ago
Just wait until you get into the business world. Before I went pro, I was all IM all the time (I'm old so FB/TW wasn't around) Email is till considered leeding edge for a lot of traditional business, with the phone being the preferred comm tool still. I really wish email was better, threaded, open .. you name it but it just isn't happening. I'm shocked (and pleased) when a client messages me on FB or through TW. Although it always leads to a phone call or email (not to mention face-to-face meeting) when we "get down to it".
- the_real_r2d2 17y ago
  In the corporate world, e-mail is the king. But it is because there is not anything better. It has a lot of problems and it has a broken model for today standards, but still is the best so far.
- albertsun 17y ago
  What I was trying to say is that over the past four years email has replaced IM, Facebook and Twitter as the "leading edge" for my social interactions now, even though I'm not in the business world. They were popular, but they're now mostly on the periphery.

jsz0 17y ago

The important thing about all these different services is how you decide to include people. It's more of a real organic social network where some casual friends might be Facebook worthy but have no reason to ever e-mail me personally. Others might not be personal contacts but are interesting enough to warrant a Twitter follow. Some business contacts are people I wouldn't mind IM-ing me outside of work -- others goto a separate IM account I only login to during business hours. Some people have full access.

ilyak 17y ago

Died to what? IM? IM is dying on its own. Whatever Facebook this week? Spare me. Wave? It's too hard. Twitter? How would I fit information in 140 chars and why? Email has no successor technology.

unalone 17y ago
Neither IM nor Facebook is dying. Email's not dying either, but your countersuggestions are absurd.
- ilyak 17y ago
  Didn't say Facebook is dying. Traditional IM is suffering, IMO: Twitter, Social networks and Skype ate its users. And, paradoxically, even Email. Maybe it's just me who use them less and less? No idea.
  - unalone 17y ago
    Huh! If you don't count Skype as IM then I agree with you. That's my primary IM at the moment. But isn't that IM?
    - ilyak 17y ago
      I always thought it's more of a phone thingy?
      - unalone 17y ago
        Well, it handles text/audio/video chats. But text chatting is still a big part of it: Right now I'm using it for group work, because it has a great filesharing system. It's very flexible, but I think it still counts under the instant messaging umbrella.

the_real_r2d2 17y ago

E-mail is broken in many ways (not just SPAM and overfilled inboxes) but I think there is not yet anything better. Facebook, twitter, social nets are still in the process to become effective ways of communication. Google Wave seems promising, not as the "the new e-mail" (I think that is just hype) but as a collaborative way of working. IMHO e-mail will be replaced for such a type of tool (similar to Wave) where you will have elements of e-mail, IM, tweets and social networks.

jvdh 17y ago
What is so broken about email? (apart from spam)
- the_real_r2d2 17y ago
  The way that we use it today for example. Many people have inbox full of emails that probably they would not read or attend properly. This is behavioural, not a technical issue but it is an example of why we need other collaborative models. There is a good article about it in the IEEE magazine. In the technical and security side, quite a lot of traffic between SMTP servers is in clear text. Identity is very easy to spoof. And so on ... But as I said, there isn't anything better yet.
  - jvdh 17y ago
    an inbox full of emails that you do not read is a behavorial problem. Not one of email. No amount of twitter, facebook or "email 2.0" is going to fix that. Even though the traffic between SMTP servers is in plaintext, encrypting that traffic does not solve the underlying problem. Trust on the Internet is a very very hard problem that is not going to be solved any time soon.
    - zokier 17y ago
      Trust on the Internet has a solution. SSL with proper CAs. Then the problem atleast shifts from Internet to real world.

jvdh 17y ago

People living in the US really should realise that there is a world outside of the US. Facebook may be the way of communication for american youths, but it is not that entrenched in other countries.

joubert 17y ago
How do the "youths" in other countries communicate, besides SMS?
- jvdh 17y ago
  MSN is widely popular here. And there are lots more social networks besides Facebook. For example, in the Netherlands there's hyves.nl and I'm sure the same is true for other countries.

ErrantX 17y ago

Ultimately Email is a standard communication form. As popular as Facebook and Twitter (et al) are they are technically proprietary. Email isn't dying simply because there is, as yet, no successor.

zokier 17y ago
XMPP is open protocol, and has lots of (FOSS) implementations. It could probably be easily extended to do anything email does, and do it better. And it has yet to take over the world

narenrulz 17y ago

someone had to say it.. The future doesn't replace the past. The future complements the past

lacker 17y ago
Tell that to the silent movie stars.

JoeAltmaier 17y ago

There's more to it than preference, fad and fashion. Tools get replaced when a better one comes along that transmits messages that exist near the same point in { Fidelity, Latency } space. Telephone calls are pretty high fidelity, zero latency (if they're answered). Snail mail is for high fidelity, high-latency messages (like phone bills). Nobody would snail-mail a lunch invitation any more - too high a latency. And so on. Twitter is lower latency than IM; IM is lower than email. They vary in fidelity (Twitter's 120-char limit). There remain room for a whole menagerie of tools in between, above and below. And these will be eclipsed when higher-fidelity replacements get invented. Btw somebody explain to me why its ok to automatically switch a phone call (low-latency, high-fidelity) to voice mail (abysmal latency, half-duplex crap fidelity)? This really bugs me. I don't set up voice mail because its absolutely the wrong choice - send me an email if you can't get me on the phone, or an IM or pretty much ANYTHING but voice mail.