Nov

15

Email is dead - again - or not yet - who knows

November 15, 2007 |

Chad Lorenz bemoans the death of email at the hands of IM, Twitter and Facebook today. In his post, which, I think I read last year already in some form (and which cites data from 2005, after all), Chad argues that those younger than 25 basically have abandoned email, while everybody over 25 is still addicted to it:

Thinking more practically, there’s now a generation gap between first-generation and second-generation Internet users. Colleges are finding that students increasingly ignore or never receive campus-wide e-mail announcements. All those clever forwards from Grandpa are going unread. And no matter what dominates in the dorm room, e-mail still rules in the workplace. Office-bound graduates will be forced to make Microsoft Outlook—not AIM or Facebook—their first sign-on of the day. Some may find it a vexing challenge to remediate their sloppy IM habits into professional-sounding e-mail prose.

Email, IM and Facebook coexist happily in my universe. I am over 25, after all, and basically ignore IM and Facebook happily and without seeming to lose much in the process. I do use Twitter, though…

As a writing teacher, I have spend countless hours fixing students’ bad writing habits. Using ‘u’ is simply the right way to spell “you”.

If email is in trouble, it is not because of an inherent problem with email itself. Email isn’t even become less useful because of the daily barrage of spam (gmail filters that out quite nicely, thank you).

Email is a tool of business these days. It is easy traceable, achievable and authoritative. The kids will learn that once they leave their extended, protected, playful teenage years now referred to as early adulthood. If email doesn’t work in the business world, it is because of problems inherent in the business culture these days.

Also, once email becomes a common tool on everybody’s cell-phone in the next year or so, we might just see a resurgence in email use again.

Oh, and why do kids like IM so much? Well, mostly because they don’t really have much to say that can’t be packed in a sentence or two :)


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