[ Illustration nathandaniels.com ]
/OPINION
Is email on its deathbed? YES
NO
Thomas Shambler thinks that Facebook and Twitter mark the beginning of the end of email... ...but Matt Priest argues that email is far too important to go the way of the digital dodo just yet
TS Email is old and digitally decrepit, a leftover from the 60s and it’s starting to show. Designed to look and feel like a digital letter, sending virtual snail mail worked wonders in the early days of Web 1.0, but it hasn’t kept up with our online habits. These days, it’s all about instant communication, intelligent inboxes and a single hub for all communications. Facebook knows the way; its Messages feature can gather all your texts, messages, chat and emails (for the time being) into a single, more efficient portal. MP So Facebook decides it wants to ‘conveniently’ package all your communication into a single ‘efficient’ hub - sounds grand, but make sure you tick the Terms and Conditions box
giving them permission to do whatever they please with your life. Imagine a portal that can access your data whenever it wants and see everything you do, whether it’s social or professional. Strangely enough, I don’t want to be messaged by my bank manager on a Saturday morning for a routine reminder that my bills need paying. TS May I suggest you start paying your bills on time? Facebook Messages can be organised, of course, with two inboxes - a social one, and an ‘other box’. There’s even an @ facebook.com address for those slower on the uptake. It won’t kill email overnight, mind, but that Terms and Conditions box gives you a wealth of
info about your contacts that will make for a more effective filtering system than Gmail Priority or Junk Mail. A nightmare for email marketers, but who gives a fiddle about them? MP Ah, spam. It may be a blot on the email landscape, but turning off email won’t make it go away. From now on I’ll be ‘poked’ by Nigerian spammers telling me that my long lost uncle has died leaving me access to millions and get status updates from the ‘enlargement pills are totally worth it’ fan page. TS Any filter can be tweaked, and Facebook messages will let you mark important contacts in your ‘other’ box. MP You make it sound so simple until you find certain offices have banned sites like Facebook for distracting their ever-so-diligent workforce from
achieving the common good. Without emails the professional/social balance of the workplace will become non-existent, turning work into even more of a social hierarchy, based on ‘liking’ your boss’ constant baby updates. Plus I still can’t see why I’d want my HR department tweeting me - in text-speak, with every third word falling victim to the auto-correct function - about the new photocopier. TS This isn’t about the death of long letters or giving the hot secretary from accounts a good ‘poking’; it’s about putting web communication, from written messages to VoIP, in one easily accessible place. Maybe it’s a case of email evolving, rather than dying. But we can’t ignore this new threat - the kids are moving towards instant messaging, Twitter and social networks, at email’s great expense.
What you said...
I don’t use emails as much as I used to anymore. At work, yes, but for my friends it’s all about Facebook AK Sharm
Coincidentally, just had to give my email ID to a Twitter friend because the 140 character limit is not enough for a real conversation @Elizeibari
I doubt Twitter and Facebook are killing email. They are mostly used for social networking and advertising purposes, while emails are for
the official stuff Winnie Sunny It is certainly affecting how we interact. There is still the need to keep private things in email format, away from prying eyes. While Tweeting that you are having an epic dump is perfectly acceptable Andrew Webber
www.stuffmideast.com / 33
33 Opinion JUN11.indd 33
5/26/11 6:41 PM