Does Email Have A Future?
I was reading an interesting discussion yesterday regarding email and how it is now the bastion of the old. By old in Internet Terms it seems we are talking about the over 30s.
Email does have the ability to collate messages in a format that you wish to deal with (i.e. by whatever particular desktop email client you feel suits you, or indeed webmail client) however it’s essentially poor implementation means a) it’s not a reliable communication method and b) as we all know, spam. Spam does take the sheen away from email, we regularly get comments/questions/complaints about the sheer amount of spam people get. It’s not our fault I’m afraid Sir, we just process it for you. You’re the one who’s signed up to sites of questionable nature, left your email on your site in plaintext for robots to pick up, used ‘easy’ targeted email addresses (sales@ webmaster@ info@ support@ admin@) etc.. etc..
“But my XYZ ISP blocks emails for me!”, well yes, but that’s why we and other ISPs have to do work when they randomly decide to block an outgoing mail server. This is why you may never see a legitimate email despite logs proving to the contrary. The SMTP protocol for email was never designed to have any kind of guaranteed delivery, its ability to ‘retry’ a failed sending attempt is a direct result of this. In today’s climate this has become even more unreliable with the gauntlets of spamasassin relays, greylisting, nolisting, blacklisting and of course lazy admins who block swathes of IP ranges.
Surely there must be something better than this?
Instant Messaging? Instant Messaging in the workplace could be a minefield. It demands attention now even if it is for something as unimportant as a question that you would never send an email or pick up the phone for. Even at 2am (I hope the person in question reads this!). I’ve found it personally quite distracting until my contact list evolved into simply having people who a) I wanted to talk to on a daily basis and b) didn’t feel the need to make pointless random chatter during the day. If you’re entire company was on there? I just feel it’s too distracting. Like email, it’s become so widespread and taken for granted that even when you set your status to ‘busy’ people still message you. “I know you’re busy but…”. Is it the place for formal discussions? Possibly but I think you’ll find many people retiring to the safety of their email.
Social Networking? Being a member of such a social networking site such as Facebook does allow you to add people who you wish to add thus almost in essence creating a giant whitelist allowing you to send and receive messages to those people. The only issue with this is, like instant messaging I suppose, you have different people on different networks. I’ve been invited to join Bebo or LinkedIn and just not. I’d have to log into many different sites with many different interfaces (of questionable quality anyway, their interface, not mine) to keep in touch with people I wanted to speak to. To top it off, you get an email telling you when you have a message on xyz site so in my mind it’s simply adding an extra step. Why not just send me an email in the first place? Not to mention the privacy concerns.
Email would be ideal if it was not abused by spammers. What is the solution though? Do we have to rethink email or do we need a totally different solution?
November 19th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
There really doesn’t seem to be a perfect way to communicate, as you say. I guess really telephone with an answerphone is probably the most rounded. You can speak immediately as well as leave a message if the target is busy. My problem with this method is that I don’t like talking on phones. I just find it weird. Always have and probably always will.
I find email works but it had issues. One is spam. I don’t get a lot on my main account but I have had to pretty much abandon another due to it. On top of unsolicited spam, there is also the crap that friends decide to send you. “Here’s something I found funny”, “Send this to 50 people or you die at midnight”, etc.
There is also the problem of changing ISP. I use googlemail so whoever I have supplying my interweb makes no difference but I know many people who use their Virgin.net address or their BTopenworld address. It just adds a restriction when moving around.
Advantages are that it is asynchronous. The only problem with that is that sometimes you really want to know your message has got through now, or hasn’t, and not everyone sends delivery reports.
Next up, instant chat including IRC. This is possibly the worst thing ever invented. To quote a message I sent to Alan, “It blows”. As said above, you are advertised online by having msn open and people can just blast messages at you. Maybe it’s only one person you want to talk to, but logging in advertises your online status to the whole of your friend list, then you look bad when you ignore everyone that wants to talk to you. I choose not to login to MSN now due to this. I often have work to do and when MSN is open I just get people wanting to talk and distract me. Also, sometimes I just don’t want to talk but XP by default logs you into MSN. I’ve reversed that but XP just wants you to be online. Even worse is that they put the damn thing on the XBox. In itself not a problem but why does everyone want to talk to you when you’re in the middle of a game and can only type using a joystick? One slightly good thing now with MSN, though, is that they seem to have enabled asynchronous communication. You can now send a message to a friend who is not online and they get it when they are. IRC has the problem that it goes through waves. You have friends one year, they move on the following year. It’s just not stable.
Social sites… Spawn of the devil tbh. I open my facebook account on my mobile whenever I get out of work to check who’s messaged me, and I don’t know why. It’s just silly. Often it’s just a poke or some mundane message. It’s essentially the same as that friend spam I spoke about earlier in email but without the actual emails you want. It is pure spam.
Another form of communication is text messaging. This is so quick and easy. I use this loads. I just get annoyed with people like my mum. She’s a writer and a chairwoman of a writer’s circle yet she writes texts like “wen r we guna c u 2?”. Seriously, Magnum .45 is loaded and will be used…
The Internet is weird though. I’ve sort of known Alan and Simon (of this site, dunno if it says anywhere) for about 3 years now I guess, yet I’ve never actually spoken to Alan and I’ve never met either of them. It’s such a strange concept to know someone but not know them.
As for the best communication, dunno.
See? I’m no help
November 19th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Well done for posting a well thought out reply. I tell you what would be good about MSN, is if you could block entire groups of people. I would love to do that i.e. have a work group and a ‘home’ group. Block the work group at night.
Also my mother does that to me via text message. She’s even learned to use wtf lol omg w00t
November 20th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Why not have more than one account? A work account and friends account?
Like the telephone, email & IM are only as good as you make them, if you give everyone your account information then they can generally get in touch/bother you whenever they see fit.
The way to deal with IM is the same way you should deal with Spam, restrict access.
November 20th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Unfortunately there is some mixing – I’d have to give 2 MSNs to people who I worked with but already knew *shudder* like Simon. Tried it a while ago it was just a royal pain
Welcome by the way