More than 270 billion emails are sent around the world everyday, yet one email company believes we’re still not taking full advantage of the medium.

emailCan email get any better? Jason Roberts, founder and managing director of LiveLinkConnect thinks it can.

He says that “Email is so 90s” and that we’re taking the medium for granted. “Email needs to come of age,” he told New Zealand’s Stuff.co.nz.

As a marketer, he thinks we can do a lot more with email by making it a richer experience. I really believe email needs to come of age.”

By “come of age”, Roberts means that email users should be able to send mail full of rich multimedia content from their usual email client, and know in real time when the recipient opens it.

Roberts also believes that there is an element of retraining, or changing our perceptions of email, in what he is attempting.

He’s on a crusade to make the kind of tools used in mass email campaigns available, not only to companies, but to individual users.

The principles behind these email products are simplicity, speed and efficiency, and interactivity. The problem with email is that it is a passive communication channel in many ways, he says, while the advent of Web 2.0 and social media is turning us into digital chattering classes.

At the moment, email is a good tool for delivery and a poor way to connect.

But will the everdya email user really need all these ‘add-on’ when many of us are already switching to social media sites such as Facebook to send various messages?

With Facebook, for example, users can share links, videos, pictures, etc. Pretty much exactly what LiveLinkConnect is offering but with email. I just wonder if there is a use for it. But then again, if it is free, then why not.