Email is the bain of my life and probably most other executives. So I’m very happy when anyone attacks it as execessive, a drain on time and at worst, inefficient. Lucy Kellaway in the FT yesterday didn’t go that far in comparing email to the benefits of Twitter but said:
“To force everyone to say what they have to say in 140 characters deals with the communications overload at a stroke. Not only would messages be quicker to read and easier to understand, most would not get sent at all. The bulk of internal e-mails are exercises in back-covering or throat-clearing, and so if they were forced down to their barest essentials it would become clear that there was nothing there at all.”
I’d add to this that if most email messages sent were transparent to the world people would think a lot more carefully about the worth of what they write.
Earlier in the year Nielsen published research demonstrating that social networking and blogs had overtaken personal email use for the first time. But daily Tweets are 6 million according to Adam Stiles graph and emails sent daily total 2.8 billion (including 70-72% of which may be spam or viruses) according to Radicati Group’s figures from August 2008.
So Twitter has a very long way to go but I remember when Skype had 1 million users, now there are 405 million and regularly over 17 million online at any one time. We are big fans of Twitter at Chameleon but do people think Twitter, Yammer or another microblogging service could eventually replace email? Let us know here or @danieltwigg
3 Comments
Steve Loynes
29 April 2009
08:52am
No way, email is here for the foreseeable future. Not everything can be 140 characters. Statements of work, detailed explanations etc.
Yes, there’s a lot of rubbish on email, but people talk lots of rubbish too. There’s plenty of rubbish on TV. Trick is quickly sorting the wheat from the chaff. Given the double-edged results of most spam filters, technology is a long way of automating that little conundrum.
daniel
29 April 2009
09:54am
agreed Steve that email unfortunately is here for the foreseeable future as Twitter is in its infancy and not everything can be said in 140 characters but there’s Twitter apps that enable you to send files to address lengthy docs issue – http://www.twittastic.net/ and http://www.tweetcube.com – as for rubbish (on TV) I just turn off.
chameleon-admin
30 April 2009
09:49pm
A great way to implement more efficient email usage is to encourage every one to follow the advice here:
Also add the link your signature. That way people will appreciate the brevity of your emails.
3Comments
Die email die
Posted by Daniel Twigg April 28 2009 10:55am