In our fast-changing world of technology, the enduring presence of email feels reassuring.
It’s there to greet you every morning, or to interrupt dinner with a buzz of your Blackberry. While many of us complain about being swamped with too many messages, email has become such a prolific tool of business that it’s hard to think of how we’d manage without it.
In fact, people have been predicting the death of email for years - at least 15 in fact. I recall one of my university lecturers telling us it was on the way out and at the time I’d barely started using it! Clearly she was wrong, or well ahead of her time, because from the mid-1990s the adoption of email grew at an exponential rate. It took about a decade – and the invention of social networking websites – for its popularity to cool down.
People have been predicting the death of email for years – at least 15 in fact
Those lucky enough to be under 20 years' old tend to use email far less than us oldies. Their written communication usually takes the form of an instant message (IM), mobile phone text message (SMS), or message through a social networking site.
But the staid world of work is less flexible to change, so while email is disappearing from people’s personal lives, it’s role in business is resolute.
Death knell
Or is it? Earlier this week I was chatting with some tech savvy friends, one of whom has been playing around with the new Messages communications platform from Facebook.
You may recall an announcement in November last year from the company’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, that he would be launching a new service that would sound the death knell for email. Actually, that’s not what he said, but much of the media interpreted his comments that email is “too slow and formal” as an attack on the technology.
Facebook’s new system combines Facebook messages, emails, IM chats and SMS into a single thread of communication. My friend explained that it has some real advantages: the ability to attach files, keep unsolicited emails out of your main inbox, unsubscribe from group conversations, send and receive non Facebook messages (i.e. interoperability with regular email), forward entire conversations.
So, will Facebook Messages be replacing your business email? I think that looks unlikely in the foreseeable future. There are a few technical bugbears, but the new system appears to offer greater interoperability than other proprietary messaging platforms.
Yet when it comes to universal standards email has few rivals. You’re not tied-in to one provider, it works across so many types of device, and its needs are modest – old hardware, dated software and restricted bandwidth are not issues.
Email has other advantages: it’s easy to store (on our own terms), reasonably easy to search, and it’s easy to add and remove people from message threads. Then there’s the business culture that surrounds email: we appreciate its semi-formality, it stands as evidence in a court of law, and copying messages to colleagues gives us a sense of personal insurance that we’ve kept others informed of our work and actions.
While the technological habits of today’s teenagers so often define those of all of us tomorrow, as my university lecturer would have to admit, email has shown more sticking power than most.
James Ollerenshaw sits on the committee of the London branch of the Institute of Directors, is chair of its Young Directors’ Forum and is managing director of Curzon PR, of which Conservative Business Relations is a client. Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of the Institute of Directors.
