In Defense of Email

by Ron Daly

I had this article dropped on my desk earlier this month - "Why Email No Longer Rules..." by Jessica E. Vascellaro at the Wall Street Journal. I sat on it for a while, trying to figure out what to say about it.

Long story short: Wrong. 

Now, I can't disagree with a few key points brought up by Ms. Vascellaro. These are: 

1. Twitter, Facebook, and Social Media are set to "profoundly rewrite the way we communicate" - I'd argue they already have. You don't have to do ALL your communicating through email, the way we had to in the 90s. We've got blogs, Facebook walls, Twitter feeds, Flickr streams, etc. 
2. Social media is a constant stream of information that, often, can't be squelched or silenced, and can cause "communication overload". Email can be guilty of this, too - if you let it.

But some of Ms. Vascellaro's observations left me scratching my head. For one, the statement about email being "better suited to the way we used to use the Internet", and how that doesn't cut it anymore. Why, exactly? Because we don't "log on" and "log off" and we're always patched in to our inboxes? I'd think that makes email MORE important. The first thing that happens when you get a smart phone after it's set up by your carrier, they enter your email accounts so you can read emails as they come. We're walking around with our inboxes in our pockets. That somehow makes email less important or less useful than Twitter? I don't buy it. 

The article goes on to say that Nielsen Co. put email users at 276.9 million people in the US, Europe, Australia and Brazil, whereas there are 301.5 million using social-networking and community sites. Not knowing which study was which (maybe one of our many marketing-focused readers can leave us a link in the comments?), I'm curious about what qualifies as a "community site". Is a blog one? How about a personal web page? Are they counting multiple addresses for single users? I'm not sure how they're qualifying accounts and users, but I do know this - there are few (if any) online services one can use without an anchor email addresses that the administrators of said service can send emails to for confirmation, announcements, complaints, etc. Like bank accounts, your social media accounts need your "permanent address", somewhere they can reach you when you need to be alerted to something. Email addresses are likely fitting into their place - as the "if all else fails" means of communication online. 

I mentioned earlier the thought of "squelching" social media. In the article, Vascellaro talks about how "more sophisticated" filtering systems are necessary and how certain sites like Facebook are letting you choose who you read when you log in, and who gets left out of your communication flow.

 How to you suss out who's worth listening to and who isn't? Twitter recently announced they'd be adding "lists" - ways of sorting your followers/followees so that you only have to read the posts of select users (side note - you can share these lists with other users, which I think is kind of neat). Want to know the easiest way to sort out what you want to read/don't want to read and who to contact or avoid? Put those people in your address book IN YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT. Seems simple to me, but hey, I'm no "new media guy". 

Finally, there's the security issue. Yes, maybe your email account can be hacked. But there's a history of stronger and stronger security around email accounts as the need to transfer data has become greater and the kind of data being transferred via email has increased in size and importance. The same can't be said of Twitter, which is scaling but still behind the curve on security. Not that Twitter is completely unsecure or unaware of their security issues, but they've been slow to let people verify accounts that they use for business communication (a bitter pill for some of our associates - read here). Also, so many "companion sites and services" are being made for Twitter every day that passwords and usernames are being thrown around like confetti.

This article seems critical of Social Media in this respect, noting that personal information is flowing more freely these days. At best, personal info can be insightful or entertaining. But it can also be downright annoying ("Great, you had oatmeal for breakfast. Thanks.") or even compromising to your online security. Remember Sarah Palin's email breach last year? It all came down to a password that hackers found fairly easy to guess based on public information about her. All that loose information that people treat as "unimportant" can actually be used against you. 

The article gives a person a lot to think about, but I think it's overshooting when it says that email doesn't "rule" anymore. Email still has its place - the cornerstone of online communication, the best way to reach someone who you just can't get ahold of otherwise. 

Comments

[Paul J. Lucas (via email)]

Ron, good column and I agree, in fact email alerts are becoming...more impactful, as for social sites that's all "twitter" to coin the word another way...real meat still needs to be served on a plate (email) not a stick!