Will email be defunct in 10 years?
The jury is out on the future of email, according to new research from TalkTalk, in collaboration with the University of Kent.
The research found that email could become obsolete in 10 years, replaced by instant messaging and social network sites.
These sites, such as Twitter, Facebook and MySapce, are seen as more fashionable and faster and easier to use, plus they can be accessed from anywhere with mobile phone technology.
Although 15 to 24-year-olds do use email, they use instant messaging and social networking sites more often, according to the research, and on the flip side, older generations are more reliant on email and don’t find it as easy to shift to using the latest communication technology.
OneNewsPage.com asked its users to respond to the following question:
‘Will email be defunct in 10 years?’
The respondents were evenly divided. Fifty per cent agreed it would be defunct, the other half disagreed.
The survey was conducted by OneNewsPage.com over two days. The question was displayed on www.onenewspage.com 57, 604 times, and 240 people answered the poll.
But despite the results, I have to say that I do not think that email will ever be ‘defunct’. How would businesses run without email? Haven’t the advent of smartphones proved how much we rely on email – always having it with us?
Email will never die. Dan Grabham from TechRadar magazine agrees. He told Sky News, “Email won’t completely die off – it’ll probably still be used for some important purposes such as sending crucial files to someone particular.
“But it’s clear that for quick, direct communication Twitter and other social systems are easier to use and can garner a far quicker response – not least because inboxes continue to fill up with unstoppable junk.”
November 20, 2009 - 9:49 am
I can’t see any possible way email will be defunct in 10 years. Although I appreciate I may be speaking from a slightly biased point of view as we run an email marketing service.
While sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySapce (MySpace), might be fashionable, I certainly don’t think they can claim to be faster or easier to use than gmail. I hate it when I get facebook messages and have to log in to check what people are saying to me. Then I have to reply to everyone in the message.
I can understand why people would ask this question, but at this stage of human development I see it as even less unlikely that we’ll ever get rid of books entirely, or paper. It’s a fundamental means of communication and our world now wouldn’t be able to operate effectively without it.
Also email isn’t one single service, such as Twitter. Ask me if Hotmail will be defunct in 10 years and I’d be less certain, but email, I’d say it’s here to stay.
November 20, 2009 - 12:15 pm
You’ve hit on the point Tom, and I agree. All those social media sites use email as an integral part of their notification system and people are very comfortable with email. The instant messenger that is gathering popularity more than others is attached to Gmail (I rarely use MLM now. The report seems to be informed by people who have only ever used Outlook as their email client and are oblivious to the fact that web based email clients are all the rage. Email marketing is a tactic that produces extremely high return on investment and so the whole conversation is a bit stupid as far as I am concerned. Maybe they meant Royal Mail would be defunct in 10 years and it’s a typo. I can definitely see that happening.
Aaron Savage
Interactive Mix Limited
http://www.interactive-mix.com