Breaking: Email is Dying
OK, so maybe it isn't really news. But Robert Cringley has eulogized email quite nicely. As someone who still remembers the thrill of sending his first email via BITNET, I feel it deserves a good eulogy if nothing else.
I have in my computer every e-mail message I have sent or received since 1992. Minus the obvious spam, this database comes to about half a million messages from people as varied (or similar, if you think about it) as Larry Ellison and Larry Flynt. But lately my e-mail seems to be dying. Yours is, too.
Many of the new and competing channels that Cringley discusses are currently just a smokescreen for the same old stuff, i.e. blog posts all pushed and re-pushed via different media -- Facebook, twitter, etc.. Just see Cringley's tweets as an example.
Teenagers might be using texts and Facebook messaging instead of email, but I still don’t see executives writing a Facebook id in business cards 5 years from now. Then again it might be that I’m interested in seeing email alive and kicking…
Thanks for the link to Cringely’s article.