Jay,

Sometimes a technology comes along and it so revolutionizes a niche held by a previous technology that it effectively replaces it. Email has almost completely replaced personal correspondence on paper for most people of its generation. The inter-office memo is a now an email to a distribution list.

Sometimes a technology comes along and just isn't universally applicable to the same use cases as the preceding technology. Someone asked if the escalator replaced stairs, or if ebooks made paper books go away. Escalators offer a different value proposition than do stairs. They cost far more to install and require maintenance. They are only practical where they are affordable and the value add the provide makes sense. Similarly with paper books vs. ebooks. There are times when a paper book still comes in handy as a form factor. Readers like the Kindle 2 may well come to provide an experience that is equivalent, but will they do it for the price of a paper-back novel any time soon?

The very same response though asked if cell phones have made land lines go away. The truth is that in some countries, cell phones have become the standard before land lines became wide spread. It is just a function of the infrastructure costs and the end user costs versus the utility in the expected use cases. Even here in the U.S. It seems likely that mobile phones will eventually replace land lines. it just may be a while.

Another mode of communication that should be brought up comes to mind though. Remember Usenet? At this point, it is effectively dead, replaced with web forums, topic centered blogs, and discussion sections of news and social networking sites. I think there are some big parallels to be drawn between the decline of Usenet and any proposed decline of email.

I see two questions then: Will there be a technology that has a better value proposition while preserving utility for all the use cases? Are these 'new' technologies fundamentally different from email in the first place, are the new expressions of the same concepts?

There is no significant cost differential from the point of view of the end user. The services are all either free, or effectively free from their point of view. This is not to say that the infrastructure to support the services is not costly, just that it is supported through other means.

Some of these services do provide increased value through. Instant Messaging provides presence information and often even status information indication that a response is being composed even before it is sent. Social networks provide a means to contain messages to self organizing groups allowing for highly targeted audiences and exclusion of (most) spam. They also offer an ability to share information about connections among the members of your network. The perfect example is being able to find out on LinkedIn if you know anybody that knows anybody who works at a particular company without having to send out a message asking all your connections if they do.

I've been using Pidgin for a while as an IM client. I have accounts on virtually every IM network you can name. I chat on IRC from time to time. Most of my IM accounts have email accounts associated with them. I'm on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. All of them converge within Pidgin. Thanks to a plugin on Google Code, a friend of mine on Facebook logs in and I see them in my IM program. I see the status message they've Twittered and through integration updated on Facebook. They post on my wall, and I get a Facebook notification that Pidgin treats as a new message notification (normally used for email associated with the IM accounts).

This is where I see things going: An integration of these silo services into a cohesive presentation. Email may not die. It may just become part of a richer communications presentation paradigm.

Now if someone would just right a LinkedIn plugin for Pidgin...

Links:

• http://www.pidgin.im/
• http://code.google.com/p/pidgin-facebookchat/

posted March 14, 2009

Technologies merge and blend. The root of email which is store and forward will remain and the design pattern is being copied into many applications. The root of real time conversations will remain. The root of instant messaging which is presence and push based messaging will remain. The Bulletin Board paradigm the forerunner to social networks will also remain. Each of these paradigms will be integrated into social networks to enrich the social interactions. The ability to search, categorize, transpose, and mix these conversation threads will only grow. Network functionality and node (client) functionality will only grow in richness and complexity.

As to "Cloud Computing", can we say "Time Share". People forget we moved away from "Cloud Computing" only after a justice degree that IBM was not allowed to use this as the only method of selling their services...

By the way, people laughed at me in 1986 when I listed my Compuserve address on my business card, but it was the best way to maintain contact with a college student that frequently changed phone numbers and addresses. Also at that time it was illegal to use the internet (Bitnet) for commercial purposes. Things change but good design patterns remain and are constantly reborn with new names...

posted March 15, 2009

Vince

Just brought back a happy memory - being 7 years old and striking senior managers dumb as I helped my dad demonstrate the awesome 64KB portable power of the Osborne-1. Some people in the preceding seminars actually laughed at the thought such a thing could exist (and admittedly, only Schwarzenegger could have called it a laptop).

I now hold some kind of staggering multiple of that machine's power in my hand, which also doubles as a phone, organiser, and has smooth glass instead of a keyboard. Weird. Wish he could have seen it.

I'd never do anything like predict the death of email, but it's definitely not the right fit for emerging business needs. For a short update, an enterprise-based IM system works quite well (particularly if you have phone / video conferencing tied into it) - and with the rise of 3G, could be made portable reasonably easily.

I may be a certified web geek, but I do feel a distinct overload in terms of email - particularly the way it's (over)used for mass employee communications in the same way that red-top or blue-paper memos used to be in big corporations (Anything formatted to say THOU SHALT READ THIS!, if overused, is one swift route to the bin, whether real or virtual.)

Frankly, if I need to get an answer from someone, confirm something, or check up on something, I'll always pick up the phone rather than wait my turn in the mail queue.

posted March 15, 2009

Jay,

I’m a sales and business development guy at heart. I have worked in the technology industry for over 30 years. I love it when some XGen goes on and on about a new development that is nothing more than an improvement to a technology used before they were born. Don’t get me wrong I was the same way when I was new, passionate about everything. I worked for Stanford Research for a number of years and bleeding edge technology doesn’t impress me anymore. I’m more interested in what it will accomplish, not what it is….

Saying that…. email is an extension of snail mail which is still with us. Good gracious the fax machine is older than the telephone and it's still viable today. Look at the junk mail you get every day. Snail mail as a per cent of all communications is declining rapidly, but more than likely still growing in size due to the increase in population and the decrease of production cost (everyone has a printer and good publishing software now days). So the real question is not if email will survive, but in what form? Technology is changing at an increasing rate. To predict the impact of technology over the next ten years you would have to look at the change over the last 40 or 50 years.

We clearly will have text to speech, speech to text, RSS feeds, audio files and video files. Communications will be multi-media, not just written words. The internet will not so much be the “internet” as it will just be a communication vehicle. Most of the devices we use will have continuous access to it, even your refrigerator. Much of our communications will be driven to and from a mobile device. As technology shrinks our personal devices will be personal computing, web browsing, media playing, communications devices. We also know that our mobile devices can be linked to “heads up” displays in cars and even eye glasses. The key technology advancement will be in filtering.

With the absolutely mammoth amount of information coming at us from an increasing number of sources, how will we ever get what we want and need? With all of this tsunami of information, how will I know that there is a critical message coming my way? I worked in the electronic storage industry for several years. The issue was not how to store more data; the issue was how to find it afterwards. It’s not the sending, it’s the receiving technology that has to be improved….

posted March 16, 2009

Fascinating conversation.

Someone (above) identified 'convergence' as the key. You'd have thought so, wouldn't you? Yet what we really see out there is divergence. 'The conversation' has found many different registers instead of being constrained in the one register of 'email'. So aspects of the conversation are now taking place in Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, IM, SMS. It's the balkanisation of communications and it's happening for numerous reasons.

One is that no one tool seems to be able to work in all the registers and therefore maintain all the different types of conversation within itself. But tools like Facebook come close, in that they can support everything from one-to-one private conversations of unlimited length through to public micro-blogging.

Another and more telling reason is that the web, rather like pop music charts, is now driven by trends and populism, and this will increase as the average age of the conversation decreases. So although our lives crave converged conversation forums, the 'cool' factor will always outweigh any fantastic whole-of-comms integrated solution that arises.

So that leaves convergence in the hands of the receiver, as it were. We'll never have a converged conversation, so it will be up to us as individuals and to the manufacturers of 'life devices' to give us the tools to allow us to converge the bits of the conversation that we want to participate in. And most of us we will want that to be able to follow us wherever we are.

So I see the future containing super PDAs which can integrate all the diverging conversation strands seamlesly into universal front ends. As end users we won't have desktop email clients or IM clients any more, and we won't even very often see the boundaries between email/IM/social networking as our tools effectively integrate them and break down these boundaries.

But there will always be new Twitters and Facebooks that will arise outside the integrated environments of our tools, and will become cool for a while *precisely for that reason* until they become integrated, then the next 'outside' thing will become cool. In fact, that's exactly what's already happening. Twitter is the outside thing of the moment. It's uber-cool because it's new and alternative and is seen to subvert the existing hierarchies in a pseudo-anarchistic way. Hang on, that's how we viewed email once, wasn't it? But Twitter is already starting to become integrated into the main conversation, especially as corporates flock to it.

And just like the present, the population of the planet will still be divided less by divides of race and country than by divides of information empowerment. Those of us who are ‘in the conversations’ will continue to be disempowered by having access to too much information but not having the specialist knowledge to necessarily distinguish signal from noise, and the majority of the human race will continue to be disempowered by too little information.

What was the question? Oh yes :-) Actually I think I am still on-topic, but only just. Thanks for the thought-provoking question, Jay

Cheers,
Clive
www.cliveconway.com

posted March 19, 2009

I'm not sure this will happen in the foreseeable future in the business world at least. Think about how many people's work flows are wrapped around email. Its totally ubiquitous, its embedded in business culture.

Can you imagine starting at some company and they tell you we don't use email here we just use twitter? Or we just text each other all day?

Your argument against email seems to largely be about spam. If everyone shifted to some other protocol, wouldn't the spammers just focus on that instead?

posted March 8, 2009

Hi Jay

I see it heppening as well, but I don't think spam is the issue. My spam filters now are working very well and rarely I loose an email. Only a small group of people like the system administrators use to receive so many mails that they can't manage them.
The real issue is pressure. People prefer a chat or a text message because because you are assumed to receive it immediately. So they expect a quick answer, while with an email you are obliged to answer immediately.

I remember few years ago, when chat and texts where not used very often, every time I had an issue with a system whose administrator was far I prepared an email, while my colleagues told me to pick up the phone because it was quicker. I always tried to explain that writing the things down was clearer and led to less misunderstanding, it was useless.
This could be even worse. In a chat you type quickly because there someone waiting for your comment on the other side, and I never saw people thinking to correct or retype a text message

posted March 8, 2009

In the business world, there are becoming more amd more demands for retention of emails, etc. leading to eDiscovery requirements. In the event of Securities and product liability lawsuits and litigation, a cases have been lost or unfavorable rulings have occurred due the inability to provide requested emails, documents, etc. for evidence. The assumption being, that "there must have been something to hide". This position was one of the after effects of the Enron scandal (and others). A greater demand for information retention and retrieval will continue and business is just recently getting a grasp on how to handle email. I don't see texting replacing email, rather, just another informal method of communicating.

My step-son and I were talking about this concept of new technology replacing old. Reality is that new methods of communication are not always replacing old ones, they are augmenting them. We still have pen and paper letter, postal services, the telephone, TV, as examples. While the older forms may diminish, they don't ever go away. Automobiles may be prevalent in many parts of the world, but a far greater percentage of the world is still in the horse and buggy or oxcart era.

posted March 8, 2009

A new form of "tween" -- I use both. Email for friends and colleagues and texting via cell phone for my kids.

Most frequently sent text message: "Dinner!"

I do not use IM as I find it intrusive.

I suspect email will live on beyond ten years. Mostly, because I don't see a reason to kill it off and when the young generation you speak of starts working for living (let's hope they have that option someday), it will likely be a part their workplace.

posted March 8, 2009

posted March 9, 2009

My opinion is a simplistic one
Emails : Definitely they will survive people will even use it in diffirent ways in order to communicate and socialize
Desktop Email applications : They will survive as long as Desktops themselves survive but i doubt that in ten years that the concept of a Desktop will remain the same we are seeing a lot of futuristic concepts that will eliminate it

Thank you for Reading

Ahmad M. Khandaqji

Ahmad K. also suggests these experts on this topic:

• Ruba S.
• M. Yaser J.

posted March 9, 2009

Email will stick around.

Twitter limits you to 140 characters. Not nearly enough to discuss a complex topic. And if you miss a tweet, you're lost.

Web pages have privacy and security issues. Either anybody can see them or you'll have to loosen security each time you need to add someone to the discussion.

When do I know I need to look at a new web page? If you don't push at least notification of changes, I'll have to go looking at web pages every day just to find if there's anything I need to know or take action on. I suppose I could get a tweet to know where to go, but then I've got to open a web page and maybe a word processer and the sender will have to create a tinyurl or type the whole URL in letter perfect.

What is needed is proper use of email. That means no spam and people using proper email courtesy. Don't reply to all unless everybody needs the reply. Don't send to anyone that doesn't need the mail.

If everybody starts replacing email with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, those channels will also become too full and the spammers will join in and you'll be in the same place email is now.

posted March 9, 2009

Hi Jay,

The concept of the inbox does not ever go away. You will continue to allow some people to contact you immediately, everyone else will need to leave a message.

Media formats will evolve. It will become easier, faster, cheaper to leave a video message. However short text remains as sometimes you will not have access to hardware to send the more complex message.

Service providers will change. The more satisfactory service providers will gain adoption at the expense of obsolete services.

posted March 9, 2009

I do not believe we will see email apps fall by the way side....they may change and morph into a more robust app.....however I doubt within 10 years will we see email apps vanish within IT. Back in 1997 I predicted the desktop would be radically different within 5-10 years.....the only change over the years has been processing power and memory thus my prediction was wrong.

posted March 9, 2009

I think email will stay. Email is better suited for a more, thoughtful, well-thought dialogue whereas texting is better for a quick, terse communique. Also, email and texting work well for asynchonous exchanges. IM/chat is great for an electronic conversation where you expect real-time response (less than 30 seconds).

posted March 9, 2009

Things are going to change, especially the specific way we do things like communicatng, sharing and entertaining ourselves.

I think cloud computing will have a huge impact over the next 10 years. Today, you can call Gmail, LinkedIn, and Facebook early examples of cloud computing, but as the functionality distills itself, we will see easy access and easy sharing via the cloud to anywhere we happen to be on the planet.

Cloud apps and functionality -- already pretty impressive (seen some of the Iphone apps?) will improve, become more intuitive and cover an even broader spectrum of functionality.

Add to that new technology that will marry audio, video, voice recognition, into new smarter devices and we have an opportunity for major changes. Once freed from pressing buttons to write a message or clicking mice to execute commands things will really get different.

I see eventually a single personal device that acts as our private access mechanism to everything, phone, radio, video, gaming, surfing, working, communicating and sharing. It will be our cell phone, car radio, word processor, movie theater (big screen or portable) and its going to fit in your pocket, pay your bills, buy your hydrogen (for the car), punch your time clock and provide you access to secure areas.

Don't laugh. The Memresistor technology is going to reduce size and power requirements for storage and compute power by magnatudes we have never seen. Not only does it work at 5 atoms wide, but it works best in these extremely tiny spaces. Couple that with spray on lcd video pixels, thin flexible batteries and you have ingedients for our most creative minds to reach absolutely beyond today's world.

My answer, yes we will have Email. Just as I would answer Henry Ford ... yes we have cars. Or Napolean ... yes we will have weapons.

posted March 9, 2009

I think email is just the stuff that used to be in the Inbox on my desk! yes, they actually delivered mail to you. I still have two letter openers. I threw away about 70% of the stuff that I received then. Using Gmail and Verizon, plus the filters at my company, email has grown into a marked improvement. However, I would be that 25% of my email never evcen shows up, not even in the spam box, as it is filtered out automatically. I now get about 10% of my mail dumped into the Spam folder daily, as opposed to 50% or more in the past. Over the past 12 years, I cannot imagine life without it. Of course, I was addicted to Compuserve.

We have a couple of workcenters that tried to use IM, but I have found that people are using email, SMS and Twitter to get things done. We can get email on our phones, and though I type a bit slower with my thumbs, I have sent two page emails on my Crackberry.

i do agree that if anything is a threat to email, it is spam. However, most email providers have decent filters. For the one that I have that doesn't, I only use it for people that I consider to be a nuisance and don't want to answer their email anyway (did I type that in the open).

email was the next iteration of the inbox. I don't think that will go away, as it is available across domains and platforms. I can't tweet everyone, or chat on Google with all of you. But if I send you an email through LinkedIn, you will get it. That is not going away unless something awesome arises. Could happen. I remember my first Internet browser and how quickly *.com grew. What will come next will involve cloud computing, and that will be fascinating to watch.

posted March 9, 2009

My thoughts on the business world, email itself is not going away but its role will diminish as collaborative sites become more prevalent. Instant Messaging seems to becoming increasingly rich in content that passes through it either directly with a file share, conceptually via the conversation - which can now happen via text, voice, and video combined. I see a collaborative workspace with embedded IM & Presence becoming the norm as teams work through business processes and individual contribution. Email currently still serves as workers primary document management, knowledge repository, workflow engine, etc. which is changing and needs to continue to change.

Email will still do much of the heavy lifting and more formal communications (although I imagine it being much more embedded into portals &/or line of business apps) but it will definitely not be a “desktop application” (which will be a dirty word in another few years).

The "consumerization" of business applications (with email leading the way) is extremely exciting and is simultaneously driving the democratization of technology which enhances our collective ability to create wealth, improve education, more fully leverage the power of capitalism, enhance social equality, and raise global living standards. The next 10 years will be the most innovative time to date in collective human history.

posted March 9, 2009

I definitely see the reasoning behind this question. Before entering the coprorate workforce, even while working full time for a smaller company, I went years without using email other than "throw away" email addresses (generally hotmail addresses I'd create temporarily to sign up for something online and abandon - spam traps) I had used email "back in the day," but even the ease and space allowments of gmail never really drew me in to use email much. If I wanted to talk to friends, I would use Facebook or AIM or call or text them - faster and easier. Everyone's email address would keep changing, and it just seemed pointless to try.

However, as soon as I began working for a larger business, I immediately recognized the value of email. Third party apps don't offer the customizability, security, control and stability required for corporate communications. I've had my facebook account shut down twice by a jealous ex-girlfriend, but fortunately knew better than to keep anything important there. If you want to try to remember something that happened two years ago, email is the only option unless it was a collaboration or you had some other reason to keep notes on your hard drive / server share.

What I'm trying to say is, for personal use email may be on its way to becoming irrelevant, but it'll always have its place in the corporate world

posted March 9, 2009

I don't think email will remain in its current form - the teenagers today have already moved away from it to Facebook, Twitter etc. Texting is "old hat". Presence info will become more important in the workplace with IM taking much of the current email space - short, sharp, immediate, collaborative and disposable.
The desktop and handheld devices are changing and Presence info is already starting to be embedded. Why email and wait for a response when you can track someone down intelligently see if they are free and get an answer immediately...?
Interesting topic - I'd like to see the outcome.

posted March 9, 2009

Sure E-mail survive next 10 years, but not reached just PC:'s anymore.
Mobile Phone, PDA on front and you link you post server to different
location many time for a day, using wlan or mobile connection with your
laptop.

I have used Mainframe based MEMO E-mail system on 80's, then come
BBS (private use) directed to nowadays webmail boxes and post service
host.

Perhaps there come video message but what i use on 80's and today is
just TEXT. One change perhaps is reliable post "have been read"
response and secure deliver but their specs are ready to use even today
but who uses them ?

posted March 9, 2009

I recently did a presentation where I said "I have been using email for almost 30 years" and was called a liar by several attendees afterwards. Of course they were wrong, I am not a liar, and I have been using email for almost as long as I've been working. "Cloud computing" cracks me up - doesn't anyone remember mainframes? Email isn't going anywhere, anytime soon. The problem with "silos" is that I now have email in LinkedIn, Facebook, ecademy, etc., none of which is in my filing system at the server level - I use my own server with IMAP accounts so it's available on my iPhone, or from any web connected device.

I'm with the person above who said something to the effect "when the children get real jobs, they'll find out what email is used for". If you're going to have a job AND a life, you have to learn to set boundaries and not be accessible 24x7 to anyone who wants you. Does anyone remember phones without answering machines? The communication needs are still the same, just the tools keep transforming. Not always for the better. ;-)

posted March 9, 2009

Do you remember about 20+ years ago when email was inter-company only? I don't remember when the lines blurred and email opened up to external addresses. My point is, email has already been around for such a long time. I also appreciate IM-ing. If you don't want to be interrupted, there are ways to handle that with IM. I am a text person. I would rather send a email or IM message than pick up the phone. I would prefer to IM someone and ask, "Do you have 5 minutes for a phone call?" before I make the call. I just love the documentation that email provides as well as the efficiency.

posted March 9, 2009

Email's been around since 1965; I think it'll survive another ten years.

Desktop apps don't seem to be going anywhere either, at least for home users. Webmail, up to and including Gmail, hasn't killed it. And unless there's a quantum leap in corporate thin-client systems, I can't see desktop email being dislodged from its perch there either.

posted March 10, 2009

I love the idea that email is now seen as being for more thoughtful and indepth communication than other things. Isn't that what we used to say about letters, memos and papers?

Communications technology is evolving rapidly and convergence is the core.

It's not long since I could not bring myself to use sms at all. Now it's often my primary means of communication for business and personal. Twitter is finding it's place; other social sites are intruding; I still send out lots of email.

ButI don't use email for quick and dirty any more - unless sms, IM and theor ilk are unavailable for some reason. By the same token it's so long since I last sent a hard copy anything I no longer possess a printer. It's not that long since I paid a couple of thousand bucks for a high end laser printer and used it till it fell apart from over use!

SO YES ...I will be very surprised to see email clients reamain recognisably the same and NO I will not be surprised to see email take a back seat to other more integrated technologies.

I'm looking forward to quality, cheap real time video calling & conferencing on the go. I'm looking forwatd to SMS2020 for short text based messaging that is voice controlled. I'm looking forward to seamless integration of live action with virtual action in business meetings. I'm confident of the virtual demise of hard copy documentation.

posted March 11, 2009

"The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation" - Tim Berners-Lee inventor of the world wide web.

posted March 11, 2009

I think email as a service will survive - it is the trend everyone is following: -
- GMAIL has a daily growing inbox for free with a ton of services and its latest 'offline' service even allows you to browse offline (Doh!) when you are not connected.
- Hotmail has 5GB.
- even linked in has its own 'inmail' service.
The same points mentioned for the life of email are actually standing against desktop email.

SMS, on most modern phones, has a limit of upto 1000 characters (EMS), but for services like 'twitter', this is limited to '140'. Still, it hasnt stopped people from using such services. Not to mention SMS is (approx.) half as old as email.

Plus, any decent phone today has basic email functionality, even reads gmail.

So I dont think email is going anywhere anytime too soon, even simple soon for that matter.

Regards,
Faraz

posted March 11, 2009