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You can file and search e-mail. You can also save IM files, but searching is a bigger pain as each person you converse with has his/her own file.
I also use e-mail as stickies -- they're in my drafts folder.
A team I'm working with -- we discuss the design and changes by e-mail. We conference call won't do (the deaf thing, we're in different locations, and our schedules rarely jive). The email waits for us and we respond when we can.
We could do this in a forum, but forums don't come to us (unless we're subscribed). A project application works for this, too, and we use it sometimes.
Twitter -- fast flowing conversation that focuses on NOW. Not good for much else.
Conclusion: E-mail ain't dead or dyin'.
I saw a similar conversation a couple of weeks ago. My take on the whole situation is that as we increase the number of ways we communicate, we reduce our reliance on any one way.
For example, two hundred years ago, you could talk face-to-face or send a letter. A hundred years ago, you could also send a telegraph. Twenty years ago, you could telephone the person. Ten years ago, you could email. And today, you can do all of the above plus text message, IM using one of ten different services, write on someone's Facebook wall, comment on a blog post, send a Twitter message...
The problem is that everyone has their preferred method. "Email me," someone with say. "Call me on my cell, not my work phone, if it is an emergency," says someone else. "Why aren't you on Twitter yet?" says some Twit-ter.
Ironically, as the number of ways of communicating increases, the likelihood of actually being able to communicate with any given person at any given time decreases. This, I believe, should be the First Law of Communications.
(Email me if you'd like to discuss this further, or leave a message on my MySpace page...)
~Graham
I do think we'll see a world soon, however, in which email is akin to the answering machine or voicemail. And most of us still have those.
As for Twitter, while I'm enjoying it heartily, I'd never use it as a private communication board. As you can see, I have trouble sticking to 140 spaces.
Their responses were usually that they didn't have time. When we probed further they usually responded that they didn't have time to figure if it was an email from us or just spam. Apparently lots of user just delete all their emails every couple days (or mark as read an ignore).
Currently we are getting ready to test using RSS feeds instead. I believe that email, for marketing and customer contact efforts, is dead.
Have partly countered this by having various email accounts, some that only a select few know and use, and other more general ones. Thunderbird handles this quite well for me.
And then there is spam.... enough said there.
Just pick up the phone, or bring your topic to the web conference, or maybe just hold back on the urge to send the email and see if your "urgent problem" that required spamming the entire department doesn’t just take care of itself.
Does anyone ever send a carefully hand-written note via postal mail anymore?
If an executive gets such a carefully and painstakingly created note, I guarantee she will read it carefully from top to bottom and you will get a return call.
If it is a friendly "chat" e-mail, the recipient can sit with a hot cuppa at his/her leisure later and read my comminques during a time of "r and r".
If it is a business e-mail, I can continue a dialogue with a colleague, client, prospect, supplier, vendor, etc. when they have long since closed their brick and mortar office.
Many of my clients are international and Hong Kong/Tokyo/London/Dubai/Mumbai time zones make it nearly impossible to have "real time" discussions. E-mail is internationally well-known and well-used ... not so much Facebook, MySpace, etc.
I, too, use e-mail as an ongoing to-do list. I also file them in lieu of paper so that they become my working client files.
LONG LIVE E-MAIL!
iznt that gr8? (see what I mean?)
Texting and other currently available means aren't practical for intense or long-term business uses - whatever the age of the businessperson.
I'm not sure even teens would want to describe complex costing and deadline considerations via texting or IM. I do know a few super-entrepreneur teens who enthusiastically use e-mail.
Also, I (like Toddie above) intensely dislike the phone - cell or land line. I often spend literally days playing voice mail phone tag, accomplishing absolutely nothing except a lot of frustration. With an e-mail exchange, a lot could have been accomplished with the same effort (not to mention being able to conveniently archive and re-refer to our elongated multifaceted discussions).
On another note, I and my friends frequently send 3+ full-page e-mails to each other as the replacement for the long friendly snail mail letters everyone used to send.
These e-mails can either be read during a quiet time on the computer of printed and read while cozied in bed. They can also re-read to one's heart's content (it's comforting, somehow to re-read these types of communications).
None of the existing available technologies allow this.
What a seemingly innocuous topic Mike, but what an outpour!
~Graham
When it comes to quality "staying in touch with your friends" -- as in several pages of text to be savored and responded to in kind -- e-mail is the ticket.
I don't have any problem with junk mail and I don't use any kind of spam filters. I simply spend about 10 minutes per day flushing the spam myself and it's done. It doesn't take any longer than brushing my teeth in the morning.
If someone can show me a social media site that allows you to read several pages of text with pics, respond in kind, conveniently archive the communication (including pics), and that is non-real time (so that the recipient isn't disturbed in an "off" moment), I'm all ears ...
Anyway ... If you require a group communique, a blog (the format we are currently using) could be effective. You'll notice that my input into this blog is rather immediate and we are all collaborating on an opinion poll that discusses the pros and cons of email in a similar fashion that a group may discuss the pros and cons of a business decision.
Video conferencing is another option if the collaborators are in a similar time zone and input is required from the many collaborators in real time.
I find that when the collaborators involved are in time zones that span 18+ hours' difference and when there are 2 (or so) people involved in a decision - such as whether or not to proceed in a particular direction - email accommodates the process quite well.
You'd be surprised at how many CEOs and management staff are in just this position. Dubai and Mumbai, in particular, are shaking the rafters when it comes to international co-ventures and things are heating up in other areas of the globe, as well.
As for social media used in business applications, I'm not sure what you mean, Bill, by "the proper application of the concept behind social media". As far as I knew, it's called social media because it was originally designed as a venue for an exclusively social application (and to be entertaining to the participants while they are socially connecting). Even so, it seems to me to be only applicable for tiny snippets of information transmission (such as I mentioned above).
I'd be willing but changing the ingrained habits of those in other countries may not be so easy. Such business people many times already have a language barrier and have been accustomed to using email for years. Asking them to use MySpace or Facebook (or something similar) would be a hindrance, not a help, in expediting the collaborative process.
I'm always open to new options but, so far, email has won the day with those like me in the international business arena.
Any thoughts from anyone?
Social media and Web 2.0 as they relate to business, involves more than a facebook page or a twitter to let their followers know they are headed to dinner. When you take the power of a having a social environment and apply "behind the firewall" you get collaborative efforts and engaging online meetings. Blogging, as you mentioned, is a great tool as part of a project or a departmental communication. Social bookmarking behind the firewall helps employees to benefit from other's search efforts.
And all of this occurs without the benefit of email.
I haven't actually ever had a situation where numerous people were being cc'd in an email. I and the others with whom I communicate cc sparingly and then only when it's absolutely essential that someone else be included in the loop. I noticed that our management team in Australia wasn't familiar with the cc feature at all. Perhaps it's an American organizational tendency.
In the academic environment in which I have been involved for many years, I find that "behind the firewall" as you mentioned is indeed a wondrous tool. The scientists and labs can share recent developments and insights as the experiments proceed with input from all parties. I second your motion that these are helpful applications of options other than email.
My comment above was in reference to a sweeping negation of all things email. It truly is an effective communication method for many and the suggestion to expunge it rattled my rafters a bit.
The long term trend is towards mobile, saw an awesome tech post the other day where a concept cellphone / pda type device was described that actually molds itself to the arm of the user. Expect more and more integration on a personal level.
lrmguru.blogspot.com
People have choices and RSS is one of the examples. With RSS I decided to be pushed when I want to be pushed. But when you send me an email then I have no choice. And I can decide to ignore it as I ignore TV ads.
Therefore communication is becoming free: a choice.
Johan
- Email is generic business related: people knwo each other hardly.
- "Social enterprise" websites (like Linkedin): business "relationships" - you know these people, but not so well, thus you want to stay in contact through a bypass system.
- IM is at best between business people who have a long standing business relation or within the same company/corporation.
- Texting (SMS) is bewteen collegues or when on travel with business partners.
Is email death?
Maybe for lead generation as this is push marketing (like Johan says May 11th, 2008 at 8:37 am).
Now the era of pull marketing is emerging/starting: Pull people onto your website by content and links. These people are interested.
Problem: you need to identify these website visitors, as only 2% to 3% will ever register on a webform, you need another method or service.
Google "Website visitor identifcation" for finding such systems.
Still white papers are top, as they bring interested leads with contact details.
there were so many that I didn't even want to open, (and expose my computer to) that I was really happy to find the gmail system.
although some of the spam still gets through, most of it is gone now.
The article, titled "The Death of the Business Phone Call," can be found at:
http://www.raintoday.com/pages/3660_the_death_o...
Email may never die, but the reliance upon it for so much of the "communication pei" as most people do today will decline. People sent telegrams long after the telephone was invented, but the medium eventually died off.
bc