Email in a Social-Media World

Is email losing its importance as a communications tool? Michael B. Farrell writing at Boston.com would seem to want you to think so. In the March 29 article “E-mail gets a cold shoulder,” he cited data from the Radicati Group showing declining consumer email traffic. Indeed, the technology research firm expects consumer email traffic per day to fall 3% to 4% annually through 2016.

That may well be the case with respect to consumers, but Farrell’s article mostly focuses on businesses, with anecdotes that don’t support the premise.

The article began by citing Dmitri Gunn of MIT’s Media Lab, “one of the most hyperconnected places on earth.” Dunn, Farrell wrote, is turning off his email, at least to the outside world. “If it’s urgent, or important, then by God, they’ll call,” Farrell quoted Gunn as saying. I am in disagreement with Dunn on the matter. An unwanted phone call is much more intrusive than an unwanted email.

Farrell went on to quote Rudina Seseri, a partner at the venture capital firm Fairhaven Capital, as saying, “Here’s the thing: You hand people cards, and they send you e-mail. If someone actually cares what I think, they can make an effort and follow me on Twitter.” And Politico reported March 23 that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a group of reporters, “I think email just sucks up time.”

Neither Gunn nor Seseri lists an email address on their business card, yet Seseri’s de-emphasis on email seems relatively modest. Farrell wrote Seseri receives more than 100 emails per day but now spends less time deleting unwanted ones. According to Politico, Napolitano relies on phone and briefings by staff members, who presumably do use email.

Farrell pointed out that social networks and professional networking tools such as those from Salesforce.com are offering much more than the basic communications capabilities of email. He quoted Anna Rosenman, senior product marketing manager at Salesforce, as saying, “E-mail is broken. E-mail is one-to-one communication, and that’s not how we need to be communicating.”

There is something to be said for many-to-many communications, but one-to-one communications remains critical in many instances. And social networking platforms may have some work to do before becoming truly effective collaborative tools. Marissa Mayer essentially admitted as much when she ordered Yahoo’s work-at-home employees to begin reporting to the office.

Social networking platforms are an increasingly important part of business, and I hope you’ll follow EE-Evaluation Engineering and me on Twitter, Facebook, Linked­In, and so forth. And the marketing firm Constant Contact recently surveyed small businesses and found that 80% see value in social media platforms, with LinkedIn and Twitter growing rapidly in acceptance although Facebook is dominant with 82% of respondents citing it as most effective.

Nevertheless, email will remain an effective tool that will continue to grow in importance. Here, in fact, is what Sara Radicati of the Radicati Group had to say in her blog about the firm’s Email Statistics Report, 2012-2016: “Over the next four years, we expect corporate email accounts to increase at a faster pace than consumer email accounts, as organizations continue to extend email services to employees who may not have had access to email in the past.” In particular, she noted, the mobile email market is expanding as both consumers and business users access email over Android and iOS devices.

Email has its problems, including ineradicable spam. Yet it will remain a key tool, providing a searchable record of key messages and documents in a world of ephemeral tweets and instant messages.