The death of email is exaggerated

Posted on 04 December 2007 by Tim Howell

Recently there’s been a lot of online discussion about the death of email, and how services such as Facebook provide an alternative way for people to communicate with others.

While there’s no doubt Facebook and the other social networking services have a role as enablers of communication, right now it’s premature to call these services replacements for email. This could change sometime in the future, as more people use these services, but for small businesses and those of us who aren’t early adopters, email is the norm. There are a number of reasons why:

• Everyone has email. Email usage is universal, while email is now considered as essential to business as the telephone and the fax machine. “Email me” is something that can be said by many millions of people – the same can’t be said for most other forms of electronic communication.

• There are standards . Regardless of whether you use a Microsoft product, a Google service or a product or service from someone else, you use email to communicate. While there is something proprietary about almost any service, the fundamental premise of email is that you can use any “version” to communicate with anyone else. This is proven and works well.

• Not everyone wants to join social networking services. Yes, usage of social networking services is increasing, but not everyone wants to join the latest service, nor do they want to be updated on what’s happening to their “friends” every minute of every day. Already, there are dozens of services out there, and who knows whether a service you join today will be there in months or years to come? The answer’s simple: If you want to communicate with others, and minimize the effort involved, use email.

Here at ActionThis we’re firm believers in the role that email plays, and believe it will continue to be a significant part of how we all do business for many years to come – that’s why we utilize email for key parts of our service.  We don’t doubt there are opportunities to leverage the capabilities of social networking services, but we see these as future opportunities, not of great interest to our customers right now – if you disagree, let us know!

Tim Howell, CMO

Filed under: General