Comments on: How useless is email? Two new studies weigh in

By: Bo Skovfoged

Bo Skovfoged — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 11:31:17 +0000

Ramon and N, I think you’re wrong – in more ways.

External services like Twitter and Yammer will not replace email in a business context. Integrated solutions are replacing email already, though. We use activity streams in our intranet as a means of communications. It works, everything is kept where it belongs – in a business context, related to what you’re talking about.

Which points to your argument, N. Having everything in one place. With emails, you don’t. Instead you have tonnes of fragmented communication available to you only. Share the information, but please don’t cc me.

Here’s how we do it – sorry ’bout the link, but it explains it nicely.

http://www.exformatics.com/News/noemail.aspx

By: Paul Jones

Paul Jones — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 20:34:58 +0000

E-mail is like a bunch of squirrels. Cute & amusing at first then timewasting, destructive, overmultiplying, and finally *evil*
#noemail

By: jzheel

jzheel — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 20:33:30 +0000

Why do people continue to rely heavily on e-mail? Because it’s a tool that works no matter if you’re using Gmail, Yahoo! mail, corporate mail, or whatever other e-mail system. It works for internal AND external collaborators. You don’t have to worry about whether everybody is on the same platform (FB, Twitter, etc.) and whether they use it for work. I haven’t seen another tool come along that can address that issue. If you’re one of the lucky ones who only work w/ people who also uses the same alternative tools that you do, then sure, you can use FB or Twitter or some combo of Google products. But most people don’t have that luxury.

Also, while the story cites statistics about the inefficiency of e-mail, it would help put those numbers in perspective if we had stats on the efficiency of the alternatives.

By: Christopher Weir

Christopher Weir — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 14:39:06 +0000

Email has been around for a long time and serves its purpose well. Policies and better practice amongst users will vastly reduce the overload and negative connotations associated with email.

Take a look at what our thoughts are on the recent negative press here – http://blog.unifiedinbox.com/email-is-dead-long-live-email

We are working on a collaborative service, accessible from anywhere on any device which will reduce these problems, it allows you to access all forms of communication in one place with minimum of effort required, reducing wasted time allowing people to focus on important work – https://unifiedinbox.com/

By: N

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 12:45:13 +0000

Journalists love to bash email but they don’t work in typical corporate environments and fail to understand its chief benefit — having everything you need in one place. This key feature is why nothing has or can replace it.

By: Niraj Ranjan Rout

Niraj Ranjan Rout — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 06:39:18 +0000

By blaming email, the communication tool, for problems like this is missing the whole point. The problems occur because of the way we communicate, and would manifest in similar forms in any system that we replace email with.

For instance, we do endless CC-s to people who have no use for the email they’ll get as a result of the CC. CC, and its first cousin mailing lists are responsible for a lot of clutter in our inboxes. We wrote about this in detail in our blog – CC is Evil: http://blog.grexit.com/cc-is-evil/

Consider using our tool – http://grexit.com – it helps you share useful email conversations by sending them to a shared, centralized repository, thereby helping you reduce clutter in email inboxes heavily. It also give you shared labels for google apps email – it can go a long way in helping you communicate better, leaner, and collaborate easily from your email inboxes.

By: Pankaj

Pankaj — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 22:05:17 +0000

We had done a whitepaper on the subject a couple of years ago. We had proposed the “law of meeting coordination” where the number of emails that can be generated by an email thread to coordinate a meeting of n participants is potentially n squared. You can see the whitepaper @ http://www.hyperoffice.com/business-email-overload/

By: Ramon B. Nuez Jr.

Ramon B. Nuez Jr. — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 20:04:36 +0000

I think much of the reason many still use email is part nurture and nature. Email has been the primary means of communication for over a decade. And as cumbersome it can become at times it is still a fully functional messaging platform.

Can services like Twitter or Yammer replace email? Not yet.

By: Sunil Beta

Sunil Beta — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 17:04:28 +0000

Relying on email as a unicast and broadcast communication medium has always been useful. Companies grappling with e-mail space problems need investment in elastic storage. Here’s my rationale as to why it is absolutely essential: http://www.sunilbetabaskar.com/email-in-the-organization-20040808.pdf

By: Bill Morgan

Bill Morgan — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 15:21:17 +0000

Why do knowledge workers continue to rely so heavily on email even though there’s mounting evidence that it’s a form of communication with big downsides?

Because it is there.