After the Buzz

Recently there’s been a lot of talk about about the importance of e-mail as the messaging service of choice. Social networks offer messaging services, instant messages (IM) are a competitor in real time and microblogging-servies like twitter are gaining more and more importance. So how will the traditional e-mail service compete in the future?

Being invented in 1965 (Wikipedia), the 44-year-old messaging service is more mature than any other actively used consumer onlin messaging service to date. Of course this maturity has lead to many improvements over time, including security fixes and user friendliness. But on the other hand with the internet evolving, new demands and possibilities have risen for potential competitors.

In the last few months many discussions were focussed around the question wheather if the e-mail-service as we know will stand a chance against new services like instant messaging like ICQ or messaging functionalities of social networks like Facebook (which has around 175 million(!) users by now). From my point of view, the definite answer is yes, and here’s why:

• E-Mail is transparent
  • The underlying software of mail-servers and basic messaging principles have developed over time and therefore been improved over time. Protocols like POP, IMAP or SMTP are open.
  • Instant messaging and the mail functionality of social networks are a closed circuit. One can use it, but has no idea what going on behind the scenes.
• Attachments
  • You can attach virtually everything on an e-mail.
  • You can just send text inputs to other users on most social networking sites (but they’re working on this one).
• Security (especially considering business use)
  • E-Mail communication can be encrypted and monitored in-house if necessary.
  • Since social messaging services are not open, one has to have faith in the operator.
• “What if”-scenario (Service goes bancrupt…)
  • With E-Mail you can export your whole mail-account and import it into a new program or SAAS (software as a service) application and just continue your work.
  • Competitors don’t allow you to integrate their messaging service with other services. Furthermore you can’t epxort your conversations. If the service goes down, your messages do, too.
• Interoperability
  • E-Mail is an open standard
  • You can’t send messages to other networks (for example from Facebook to MySpace).
• Implementation and ease of use on mobile devices
  • Since about ten years nearly every mobile phone has a built in e-mail-client, allowing the user to check and write mails. Setup has become really easy and the bandwith used (amount and price) is really low
  • There is no standard for social messaging on mobile phones yet, so one has to use slimmed versions of the original site (see m.facebook.com for an example). Furthermore messaging is not the core functionality of social networking sites, so one always has to click through a few links to get to ones messages)

But the most important argument why the classical e-mail-service will successfully co-exist is the simple fact that due to the increased amount of available ways to connect to a person (lets say a website owner), the more people will use ways which require not much effort. While a direct message on twitter or messaging within social networks is only a click away, an e-mail requires quite more input. This effectively leads to more users not sending e-mails but to use other forms of messaging which puts an e-mail down in terms of quantity, but raises its claim to quality.

Seen from the point of view of the person receiving messages (like the mentioned website author), many information will arrive on many channels every day. And while each channel has its advantages and disadvantages, the amount of e-mails a perosn receives will decline due to the other possible channels,  therefore making a received e-mail stand out.

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This post is tagged e-mail, instant messaging, microblogging