Email Is Not Dead, I Don’t Care What Mark Zuckerberg Says
During the launch of Facebook messaging over a year ago, Mark Zuckerberg claimed “We don’t think that a modern messaging system is going to be email.”. TechCrunch, The Wall Street Journal, and several others were out in full force declaring the death of email.
They’re all wrong, it’s quite the reverse actually.
First, let’s be clear that for email to die, it must reach the point for which it has no value. This is not the case with email, there’s an untold story hidden underneath Zuckerberg’s tongue. Patricio Robles from the digital marketing firm Econsultancy puts it nicely: “If you didn’t know this, you must have been waiting for the email.” Robles explains the real story:
- New digital communication channels have arrived.
- New communications channels have created new communication opportunities.
Facebook, twitter, text messaging and blogs have opened up new channels for communication. Each of these channels is best suited for its own purpose. When I want to send quick and informal messages to my friends, I’ll send them a text or chat on Facebook. But when I want to make an intro to a colleague (work friend) or share information related to my career, I’ll always use email.
New channels suited for different types of communication drive the behavioral change away from email. Can you imagine your friends sending you mass emails with their check-in location, status update, or customer service rant? Now that the right tools exist, different types of messages are being sent.
So what’s the advantage to these new communication channels? Lee Bryant, co-founder of Headshift says the answer is they’re “flow tools.”
“[With email] you receive a series of messages, you hold them in the inbox and have to move, delete or act on every one. Whereas with flow tools the flow moves past you whether or not you actually open the messages.”
The removal of informal messaging within email is great for email users because it reduces the noise and directs the majority of social communication away from email. Zuckerberg’s messaging system is designed eliminate cognitive overload by eliminating subjects and threads; Glider achieves flow with email by reducing cognitive switching in the inbox.
So, what’s the sticking point for email usage in the future? Here are thoughts from technologists across various fields:
Dave Coplin, Head of Microsoft’s Envisoneers team.
“The asynchronous nature is really important, the ability to attach things, the ability to have a secure conversation, all of those things are crucial.”
Stefan, Director of Marketing at Comrz.
“I think it’s entering another growth phase - as much of the world has still to get fully online, and to make use of online retail and services which very much still rely on email to communicate status as well as promoting leading offers and offerings.”
Lee Bryant, Co-founder of Headshift.
“You narrow down email primarily to what it was designed for, which is one-to-one communications.”
The development of new channels has helped to focus the purpose of email to formal messaging, and email usage will continue to grow as the global Internet population continues to grow. In fact, Patricio Robles is certain that anyone who plans to abandon email is making risky business:
At the end of the day, the message here is clear: as technology changes, so too will user behavior and usage patterns. That means there will be numeric shifts in channel usage. Listening to those who focus on those numbers without quantifying the value of the channels in question is not only downright foolish, it’s also downright dangerous when key business decisions are being made.
Email by the numbers:
There are 2.9 billion email accounts. This figure is predicted to reach 3.8 billion by 2014 (source).
When asked to receive updates from companies…”Only 10% elected to do so through Facebook, while 90% opted for a newsletter” (source).
An analysis of what people in the US do on the mobile Internet showed email occupying over 38% of their time…almost 300% more time than any other single category of activity (source).
Glider makes modern email more enjoyable and productive by automatically sorting your messages in a new interface.
