What are the headline takeaways from the research? The first study, from email security and archiving firm Mimecast, found that just one in four work emails is essential and just one in three holds immediate value. The second study combed through the inboxes of disgraced Enron and revealed what emails do contain if not critical business information. The answer? Gossip. Of the 112 emails the average corporate email user sends every day a substantial 15 percent contain gossip, the research concludes.

The Mimecast results were drawn from 500 interviews with IT professionals, 200 in the U.S., 200 in the U.K. and 100 from South Africa. What other details of the corporate email inbox did the study’s less than flattering portrait reveal?

• Nearly two out of every three (61 percent) emails received are considered to be non-essential
• On average, 11 percent of email is personal, non-work related
• Seven percent of emails in the average inbox were spam
• 63 percent of email is internal, employee-to-employee communication

For the second study, assistant professor Eric Gilbert of the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech examined hundreds of thousands of emails from Enron, hunting for gossipy missives. “Gossip” in this case being defined as emails that talked about a third party that was neither among the recipients nor the sender of the email. Exactly 14.7 of emails were revealed to contain gossip, with all levels of the corporate hierarchy engaging in gossip, though lower levels were more prone to swapping juicy morsels.

Could this level of behind-the-back chatter just reflect Enron’s ailing corporate culture? Gilbert thinks not. “Enron certainly had what could be called a ‘cowboy culture,’’’ he said, “but I suspect the way they behaved internally to each other did not differ significantly from most other U.S. corporations.”

And Enron’s email gossip wasn’t overwhelmingly things like complimentary comments about the new hairstyle sported by the colleague in the next cube over. Negative gossip was 2.7 times more common that positive gossip.  But despair not. Gilbert says gossip has its upsides.

“Gossip gets a bad rap. When you say ‘gossip,’ most people immediately have a negative interpretation, but it’s actually a very important form of communication. Even tiny bits of information, like ‘Eric said he’d be late for this meeting,’ add up; after just a few of those messages, you start to get an impression that Eric is a late person. Gossip is generally how we know what we know about each other, and for this study we viewed it simply as a means to share social information,” he says.

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?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Lars Plougmann. 

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The study says that people lose interest in free applications more often than paid. Well duh! I’ve got nothing vested in a free application, so if it doesn’t hit the mark for me, why continue using it? I’m much more likely to give an app I paid for the proverbial college try before abandoning it and feeling like I wasted money. This is all common sense so far.

The claim is also made that applications with the most staying power are Games, Social Media and Entertainment specific. I’ll agree with that for the most part — when I need to kill time, it’s Twitter, news, or some game. However, my morning ritual has me checking the likes of The Weather Channel, USA Today, Omni Focus, Ski Report, Chase, and Weightbot/Lose it. Some are free, some paid, but none exactly fit the the categorization — of course we’re all different.

I think it’s fair to say that many applications are purchased/downloaded with the idea of needing them one day. Open Table, Wikipanion, Amazon, and eBay all fill this void for me. I don’t need them on a daily basis, but when I do, it’s nice to have them available.

A metric that is not captured here is when people revisit an application down the road. There has been many an application that I’ve grabbed because of its potential and/or lower introductory price. I’ll download them, not touching them for weeks — possibly even deleting them temporarily — then decide to give them another look after some updates. Vocalia was one of these such instances. It was little more than a proof of concept when it launched and I bought it, and now it’s a solid voice dialer.

We’ve all heard (ad nauseum) about the runaway success of the fart apps and other silly gimmicks and gags. Some have made a lot of money (some are free), but it’s my guess that these apps especially fit the confines of Pinch Media’s study. Gimmicks usually offer little in the way of staying power.

So what makes an application for the iPhone or iPod touch have what it takes to remain in use? I think it’s a simple answer with a not-so-simple solution — whatever fits the needs of a particular user. Luckily each developer has a different vision which some cross-section of consumers is bound to be in line with. Perhaps some developers will find usefulness in these study results — though while everyone gets different utility from their apps, and user scenarios vary so greatly, it seems Pinch Media’s findings are sort of useless.

How accurately can your app usage practices be defined? Do you think they’re widely relevant for developers to create a killer app?

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