There has been a ton of debate recently about new technologies displacing email as the defacto form of communication. Is the demise of email sitting just over the horizon?
In a recent
The Next Web podcast, Twitter's ability to displace traditional email if the Twitter Direct Message character limit was expanded beyond 140 characters was held and the panel unanimously agreed that it was not a feasible replacement. With this being said, it begs the question how various other communication methods, emerging or otherwise, have grown to potentially become a preferred communication method to traditional email.
After thinking about various communications avenues it becomes apparent that there are two major components to this equation
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Scope - Private vs Professional
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Foundation - Infrastructure and Culture
To best frame this examination, we will use the lens of what all of this means in the land of Enterprise 2.0
New Contenders
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Twitter Direct Messages - Twitter excels at broadcast communications, providing insight into trends and providing a fabric for participants in various domains to listen in on and connect with peers. Recently Twitter introduced Direct Messages. Direct Messages are limited to 140 characters, as is a regular Tweet. Even in the absence of this restriction, the Direct Message does not provide much context around the communication, but offers a way for users to engage on a personal level. Direct Message scope can support both Personal and Professional activities, but it falls short in general usability, as well as infrastructure and culture (Would or could users send contract materials over a direct message? Not anytime soon).
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Facebook Email - The latest entry into the market of messaging - Facebook combines their robust social platform with short messaging that integrates with email. Oddly, from both a Scope and Foundation standpoint the platform has an odd fit.
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Scope - Do we want our email communications tied to a social platform? I currently have a Facebook account, but use it exclusively for personal networking - what if I wanted to leave Facebook, but used them for my email?
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Foundation - Having a corporate mail server has advantages around governance, retention management. Google Apps has SLAs, as well as 24x7 support as part of their corporate mail offering. For Personal use the Foundation will be acceptable, but definitely not from a corporate use, especially due to a series of historic privacy issues and a constantly evolving platform.
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SMS (Text Messages) - SMS has become the de facto personal communication due to its immediate, yet asynchronous communication pattern - similar to email - and value for messages that are important, but do not warrant a phone call. The messages appear on a device which most people generally carry with them constantly. With this said, SMS is inherently very limited beyond the Private Scope. It does however have broad adoption in within the realm of Foundation.
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Corporate Mircoblogging - Microblogging is just part of a corporate communication platform strategy. Technologies like Yammer offer enterprise value (Professional Scope & reasonable Foundation support), but are not in and of themselves replacements for email, nor designed to be.
Foundation - Why it Matters so Much
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Install Base / Technical Infrastructure - What programs do users leverage in the enterprise for communications? Outlook, Zimbra, Thunderbird, Mac Mail, running on top of Exchange, Lotus Notes or Beehive. People are trained on and used to these various systems. The majority of existing workforce is skilled with these toolsets, cost of change is very high. Additionally, keep in mind that our day-to-day activities are about more than just email - calendaring, contact management and other functionality are inherent ingredients in our ability to have successful business communications.
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Generational - A SMS style message or Tweet may at some point, in some form, be acceptable for business communications beyond a "Hey - will you be in conference room 202 or 206?" at some point, but it is important to note that the current business environment runs on email. It works well and has worked well for years. Perhaps when new generations become hiring managers they will change their views on what represents the optimal corporate messaging strategy, but until then email is king.
The Reality - Email is King
I generally think of myself as pretty hip, so it is tough to say, but... email is here to stay for a long time. This is driven by more than just foundational, regulatory reasons.
We must remember what breadth email communications cover. Email supplies a mechanism to quickly confirm a date or time for a conference call ("ok") - all the way to detailed contract negotiations, engineering direction communications, etc.
Email is capable of being both a Ferrari and a Minivan at once - fast, with room for 2 or 20 passengers. After years of optimization we are going to be hard pressed to generate a more versatile vehicle.
What is happening though, and will continue to happen, is the augmentation of email with various collaborative and social services.
John Mancini's Digital Landfill Blog recently dove into some details around this that are worth checking out. The next wave of innovation in communication will be on top of, not in place of, email.
Does this mean that email will always be the king of business commutation? Not necessarily. The future will tell.
#Collaboration #sms #E-mail #twitter