If you have a look back at how long the death of email has been predicted you can go about as far back as the first email service created. Not everyone adopted it.
If you want to go back to 2005 you might like the point of view of Stowe Boyd http://sto.ly/uCnRMs regarding this article. Also, I've been on talks/panels on the topic as far back as 2009 http://bit.ly/9ENcpJ and again in 2010 http://bit.ly/bG7DVz complete with a sad rendering of an inline Google Wave.
How do I feel now about email? Mixed.
What I do agree with is the notion of email as a lowest common denominator for exchanging information has a lasting value. What I do not agree with is that email is /enough/ for everyone.
Today, you have lots of choices in how you use email or elect to treat it (or ignore it) so that only the most relevant things are presented to you. If you are a company/corporation and you are planning to allow for employee communication the effectiveness of any solution is far removed from just email these days. If anything, we're generating more silos now than we ever have.
To the other comments here regarding Salesforce/Chatter, groupware, etc... I get that -- in fact I use that -- but there are still TONS [2] of people that steadfastly maintain that email is the only thing that lets them use their iPhone or Crackberry without jumping through the hoops of corporate VPNs or other hoop jumping exercises to reach a web groupware app that just fundamentally FAILED to ever take into consideration the mobile experience.
If you have a look back at how long the death of email has been predicted you can go about as far back as the first email service created. Not everyone adopted it.
If you want to go back to 2005 you might like the point of view of Stowe Boyd http://sto.ly/uCnRMs regarding this article. Also, I've been on talks/panels on the topic as far back as 2009 http://bit.ly/9ENcpJ and again in 2010 http://bit.ly/bG7DVz complete with a sad rendering of an inline Google Wave.
How do I feel now about email? Mixed.
What I do agree with is the notion of email as a lowest common denominator for exchanging information has a lasting value. What I do not agree with is that email is /enough/ for everyone.
Today, you have lots of choices in how you use email or elect to treat it (or ignore it) so that only the most relevant things are presented to you. If you are a company/corporation and you are planning to allow for employee communication the effectiveness of any solution is far removed from just email these days. If anything, we're generating more silos now than we ever have.
To the other comments here regarding Salesforce/Chatter, groupware, etc... I get that -- in fact I use that -- but there are still TONS [2] of people that steadfastly maintain that email is the only thing that lets them use their iPhone or Crackberry without jumping through the hoops of corporate VPNs or other hoop jumping exercises to reach a web groupware app that just fundamentally FAILED to ever take into consideration the mobile experience.
[1] Yay disclosure! http://fudge.org/disclosure/ [2] totally scientific... yes, you can quote that