Convopage
See the entire conversation
1/ Thoughtful @waltmossberg piece // my thoughts on killing enterprise email & evolution of biz communication theverge.com/2017/3/29/1509… @verge
The stubborn persistence of email in the age of Snapchat
Yes, you’ve still got mail.
theverge.com
40 replies and sub-replies as of Apr 01 2017
2/ Email: least common denominator. Implies ppl love when introduced then used for everything then “too much” then “kill it” Circle of life.
3/ Ppl forget but was a time when printed memos piled up in “inbox”; when returning to a pile of pink “WYWO”; or too many vmail or faxes.
4/ Communication/collab gravitate to low friction. But software is different. Tools evolve & change nature of comms. Just not incr amount.
5/ Email is best for many tasks (better than voice, fax): extra-company, intros, schedule, memorializing decisions. No need to ban such use.
6/ Bad news: email is horrible for many things. Good news: there are new alternatives that move needle on state of the art comms/collab.
7/ eg, Attachments. Worst option for collaboration. Worst option for distribution. Worst option for sharing knowledge…
8/ Why? Info sec, versions out of sync, changes lost, can’t search or find across inboxes, can’t learn context as new team member, so on…
9/ eg, Semantics. Super hard to add semantics to email b/c w/mobile every endpoint is different (clients/OS). Not like Outlook+Exchange era.
10/ eg, Effort. Email volume turns most highly paid workers into filing clerks. Watch a person in 1st class use outlook--all filing. Ack!
11/ Email super bad for knowledge capture yet routinely spawns wild threads lost to history: brainstorm, solicit opinions, decisions…
12/ BUT, cloud messaging apps move the needle on knowledge capture, integration w/data, info security, mobile. Paradigm shift->work changes.
13/ Think of messaging not as full email replacement, but a much better tool with much richer/more appropriate semantics for modern comms.
14/ Not just trying to be in sync w/Millennials, but simply better in way that rich text email replaced memos dropped in interoffice inbox.
15/ Email won’t go away as fax/vmail did but it will sit side-by-side with voice calls in terms of having specific utility/appropriateness.
16/ Messaging is an adjustment, but it is also an improvement to work. These adjustments are "disruptive innovation" in every sense.
17/ Believe it or not it took 10 yrs for email to become mainstream in the enterprise. Early days for messaging but readily apparent. //EOTS
Absolutely
Smart and correct, as usual.
But none of this is exactly a new territory either. We have been talking about this for more than a decade now.
Here’s a piece I wrote last year on the history of "email killers":
Can Slack transform enterprise communication once and for all? |…
Those of us who have been around the block a few times have seen multiple attempts to kill email and change the way people communicate in the enterprise. Slack is just the latest, but one that has…
techcrunch.com
Exactly. And those protocols are hard to change and bad to overload. Now connect to anyone with a Face :-)
15 feaking tweets by sinofsky on email. Jeez.
I love that you state vmail has gone away. My Cisco phone has a permanent red light because I haven't checked vmail in years!
there's a clear common denominator between snapchat and email: private mobile-friendly messaging and notifications.
I never thought emojis would become biz appropriate, very glad they are in many instances now @rrhoover 😺
Semantics are better extracted by parsing quick human reactions. Text is 2 levels down. Voice, Video are the ones to capture. Look @acrossio
Memorializing decisions is good when you have the chain of context with it. Decisions without context = trouble :-)
#livingmeetings < click
I'm a millennial who likes email, AMA.
Can we talk about that You Got Mail trailer?
Depends. Were you using personal email in the 1990’s?
First email sent at 8 in 2002 :( trailer is a national treasure though what a great find. Chappelle dropping in is the "wtf" cherry on top
I can't find it but I have my Cornell University issued "punch card" with my first mainframe email address TGUJ@CORNELLA.EDU.
A few thoughts: 1) email is great for external communication - it feels personal, just over bloated. Yet it is indeed a common denominator
2) some things in your inbox shouldn't be in email form - e.g. Slack has effectively taken out instant communication.
3) emails biggest advantage is its inefficiency. No other medium allows you to ignore/skip messages with no social pressure. Or reply later
Team communication should be added in order to keep the context and get colleagues input. We will show you something soon w/ @SparkMailApp
my fav part: Back then, when a reader wanted to tell me I was an idiot 4 something I wrote, I got an email. Now, they tell me on Twitter. 😂