The Decline and Fall of Email(cringely.com)
cringely.com
The Decline and Fall of Email
http://www.cringely.com/2010/11/the-decline-and-fall-of-e-mail/
18 comments
I'd argue the opposite. Email is going to experience a rebirth. Why? The reason why email declined at all was because of an ubiquitous messaging platform for the masses, SMS, while email wasn't nearly so (reading web email on a mobile device a few years ago was a rarity).
As mobile technology evolves, the use case for SMS disappears. Email apps become as ubiquitous on mobile devices as SMS apps.
And once that happens the "immediacy" advantage disappears. Today it is just as fast for me to send a quick email as it is for me to send a SMS. The speed is purely the software, where SMS was, in the past, the only one integrated with the phone contact list.
Now that your email and SMS accounts will tend toward having parity in the phone's software, I think the argument for 70 or 160 character limits disappears, especially on a phone (yes, people make the argument), where I'm already constrained by they keyboard and the fact that I'm usually on the go. And especially since on a mobile device, I HATE having to refactor my message to get the last 7 letters to fit.
The rebirth and re-emergence of email... it will look like a better SMS.
As mobile technology evolves, the use case for SMS disappears. Email apps become as ubiquitous on mobile devices as SMS apps.
And once that happens the "immediacy" advantage disappears. Today it is just as fast for me to send a quick email as it is for me to send a SMS. The speed is purely the software, where SMS was, in the past, the only one integrated with the phone contact list.
Now that your email and SMS accounts will tend toward having parity in the phone's software, I think the argument for 70 or 160 character limits disappears, especially on a phone (yes, people make the argument), where I'm already constrained by they keyboard and the fact that I'm usually on the go. And especially since on a mobile device, I HATE having to refactor my message to get the last 7 letters to fit.
The rebirth and re-emergence of email... it will look like a better SMS.
Also, note that SMS is charged per/SMS, whereas email is a few KB for a dataplan.
I suspect as dataplans become ubiquitous, IM and email will merge with/replace SMS. Possibly the whole business will reduce down to point-to-point and multicast messages in the end...
I suspect as dataplans become ubiquitous, IM and email will merge with/replace SMS. Possibly the whole business will reduce down to point-to-point and multicast messages in the end...
Also, note that SMS is charged per/SMS
The problem with that is that many non-business people don't have audible notifications turned on for email. When I receive an SMS I know it's a real person and thus important, whereas when I receive an email it's probably a group-buying site email or a server notification or something else not worth interrupting me. Until we get much better prioritization tools, it'll be hard for SMS to replace email.
"every wall or chat posting makes unnecessary at least one e-mail, maybe several."
Really? The noisy little comments and messages on facebook would have been emails? He must have been getting a lot of one word emails then like "sup", "hey liked the post", "i agree", "nailed it", "you're wrong", "me too", "here's 20 completely irrelevant links", etc.
Email still serves a purpose (one that most of us rely on). Here's my question. What would impact your life more, the utter disappearance of email or the utter disappearance of Facebook?
Really? The noisy little comments and messages on facebook would have been emails? He must have been getting a lot of one word emails then like "sup", "hey liked the post", "i agree", "nailed it", "you're wrong", "me too", "here's 20 completely irrelevant links", etc.
Email still serves a purpose (one that most of us rely on). Here's my question. What would impact your life more, the utter disappearance of email or the utter disappearance of Facebook?
I actually wish Facebook would utterly disappear.
Okay, not really; that would in fact ruin a lot of people's day. But from my selfish perspective, it would fix the only problem with quitting Facebook: All my friends are still using it.
Okay, not really; that would in fact ruin a lot of people's day. But from my selfish perspective, it would fix the only problem with quitting Facebook: All my friends are still using it.
My email is fine and with my spam filter, only the good messages get through.
Also, business communication in every corner of this earth relies on email. That is not going to be going away any time soon.
The younger generation will have to use email when they get jobs.
Also, business communication in every corner of this earth relies on email. That is not going to be going away any time soon.
The younger generation will have to use email when they get jobs.
Wrong on quite a few counts. He forgets to mention the email protocol - it is open in the true sense of the word and therefore is quite resilient. Also, the spam problem has been sufficiently solved at the moment afaik (Gmail is awesomely good at it.)
Oh no, another 'email is dead' posting.
How many of these have we had since 1995?
Is it really really dead now? Even deader? Just like the phone? like snailmail? Old, simple, technologies are really resilient.
How many of these have we had since 1995?
Is it really really dead now? Even deader? Just like the phone? like snailmail? Old, simple, technologies are really resilient.
And, importantly, in the case of email, companies can host their own mail servers & thus better protect their data. Can you really imagine companies allowing facebook to host sensitive corporate communications?
Agreed. I prefer email or paper letters for any substantiative communication in my personal communication - at work, email is the communication medium. IM is available, but it far, far, far lags email.
It is as dead as the telegraph.
These posts will only ever get on sites like HN with an inflammatory title. "Email on decline. Less critical." just isn't as edgy.
His core point, however, is obvious and hard to argue with. Just now I was thinking about a number of people who I used to email with regularly, yet we haven't exchanged emails in years now. Instead it's all texts, IMs, Facebook messages (which is like email...but not email), and so on. Email just dropped off the personal radar.
So now my email inbox is full of receipts from online purchases, and lots and lots of newsletters that I largely ignore. Because there isn't the higher draw value of personal content in there, I seldom do much more than scan it.
His core point, however, is obvious and hard to argue with. Just now I was thinking about a number of people who I used to email with regularly, yet we haven't exchanged emails in years now. Instead it's all texts, IMs, Facebook messages (which is like email...but not email), and so on. Email just dropped off the personal radar.
So now my email inbox is full of receipts from online purchases, and lots and lots of newsletters that I largely ignore. Because there isn't the higher draw value of personal content in there, I seldom do much more than scan it.
Better title: The Decline and Fall of Noisy Email
Let texting, messaging, twitter, and Facebook become the platforms for noise.
The signal is just fine in my gmail inbox.
Let texting, messaging, twitter, and Facebook become the platforms for noise.
The signal is just fine in my gmail inbox.
There's lots of Gmail love going on, here and in the comments on the original post. But notice the first few sentences of the post:
"I have in my computer every e-mail message I have sent or received since 1992. Minus the obvious spam, this database comes to about half a million messages..."
Gmail does not provide a local archive of mail messages, across the shifts in providers, mail clients, and addresses that occur over a couple of decades of using email. Gmail has some nice features, no doubt (I do use it myself), but it isn't a be-all, end-all email solution, particularly for those who need or would like to keep their email under local control.
Gmail's spam filtering is great, but it doesn't work 100% of the time. Some spam slips through to my inbox; what's worse, I have noticed a variety of false-positives (e.g., regular emails from mailing lists that I often delete but occasionally read aren't spam), meaning that I still must give the Spam folder a once-over before I delete its contents.
And, as far as I know, Gmail's spam filtering algorithm is proprietary. This means that the only way to get it is to route your email through Google, and accept the attendant trade-offs of doing so. Regardless of whether that works for you, it isn't a sustainable solution to spam to tell people to "just use Gmail."
I would much prefer to see a new Internet email protocol evolve, maybe something like what's described by this commenter (http://www.cringely.com/2010/11/the-decline-and-fall-of-e-ma...). Basically, if we move to a new standard protocol where something like the features of PGP are mandatory, then building (and filtering mail by) a distributed web of trust will become much easier. ISPs will migrate to this protocol because it will reduce their load and provide a better experience for their customers; et voila, we will have overcome the network effects hurdle that currently makes PGP essentially useless.
"I have in my computer every e-mail message I have sent or received since 1992. Minus the obvious spam, this database comes to about half a million messages..."
Gmail does not provide a local archive of mail messages, across the shifts in providers, mail clients, and addresses that occur over a couple of decades of using email. Gmail has some nice features, no doubt (I do use it myself), but it isn't a be-all, end-all email solution, particularly for those who need or would like to keep their email under local control.
Gmail's spam filtering is great, but it doesn't work 100% of the time. Some spam slips through to my inbox; what's worse, I have noticed a variety of false-positives (e.g., regular emails from mailing lists that I often delete but occasionally read aren't spam), meaning that I still must give the Spam folder a once-over before I delete its contents.
And, as far as I know, Gmail's spam filtering algorithm is proprietary. This means that the only way to get it is to route your email through Google, and accept the attendant trade-offs of doing so. Regardless of whether that works for you, it isn't a sustainable solution to spam to tell people to "just use Gmail."
I would much prefer to see a new Internet email protocol evolve, maybe something like what's described by this commenter (http://www.cringely.com/2010/11/the-decline-and-fall-of-e-ma...). Basically, if we move to a new standard protocol where something like the features of PGP are mandatory, then building (and filtering mail by) a distributed web of trust will become much easier. ISPs will migrate to this protocol because it will reduce their load and provide a better experience for their customers; et voila, we will have overcome the network effects hurdle that currently makes PGP essentially useless.
I don't quite understand what you mean by Gmail having no way to locally archive email. I use POP to locally cache all of my email on all my computers.
True, it can be done; I didn't mean to imply that it couldn't. This certainly isn't the "default" way to use the service, though.
But the little bit of extra work one has to do in Gmail to get local access to your mail is simply one trade-off. The real point is that using Gmail involves a variety of trade-offs, which many email users may not be able to or may not want to make. So "just use Gmail" is not a sufficient answer to the problem of spam.
But the little bit of extra work one has to do in Gmail to get local access to your mail is simply one trade-off. The real point is that using Gmail involves a variety of trade-offs, which many email users may not be able to or may not want to make. So "just use Gmail" is not a sufficient answer to the problem of spam.
The ability to comment publicly on articles largely replaced emailed comments. But most people don't have blogs, and probably never will, so I wouldn't call that a sign email has fallen.
But if they're not putting their opinions and thoughts out there, it's doubtful they were getting responses in any form.
There are plenty of reasons to contact someone other than responding to an opinion on a blog.
I've got a dozen emails in my inbox right now from friends, contacts, and organizations like the choir I sing in.
I've got a dozen emails in my inbox right now from friends, contacts, and organizations like the choir I sing in.
For sure. Unlike the RIM story of yesterday, he isn't claiming it's dead. He just talks about the decline and fall.
And I think there's a lot of truth to it. I don't quite buy the junk mail argument -- I publicly publish my email address everywhere because junk mail is generally a solved problem -- however I just think there are a lot of other options that have added value or lower friction.
A big personal use of email previously (5+ years ago) was the sending of pictures. You know -- the relative that sends you the 20 5MB pictures. Thankfully that is a thing of the past now, and people either post them on Facebook, Flickr, etc.
How about sharing other types of files? It was a major problem when Outlook started banning a lot of file types because that impeded how a lot of people used email. Now every uses Dropbox and other avenues to distribute files.
Perhaps the reality is just that email was, for a time, used for a lot of things that it wasn't appropriate for, and now it's back to its core value.
And I think there's a lot of truth to it. I don't quite buy the junk mail argument -- I publicly publish my email address everywhere because junk mail is generally a solved problem -- however I just think there are a lot of other options that have added value or lower friction.
A big personal use of email previously (5+ years ago) was the sending of pictures. You know -- the relative that sends you the 20 5MB pictures. Thankfully that is a thing of the past now, and people either post them on Facebook, Flickr, etc.
How about sharing other types of files? It was a major problem when Outlook started banning a lot of file types because that impeded how a lot of people used email. Now every uses Dropbox and other avenues to distribute files.
Perhaps the reality is just that email was, for a time, used for a lot of things that it wasn't appropriate for, and now it's back to its core value.
Email is still the killer app IMO. To quote Twain, rumours of its death have been greatly exaggerated.
IMHO email is unavoidable for business communications. It's one of the first cloud hosted apps, the tools are mature and it has a probative value.
Ah crap! Email is dead! Somebody go tell Mailchimp that they have to give back all that money.
Not that its a solve-all, but I get the sense that he's never used gmail.
I find myself longing for less clever spam filters. Remember the good old days when you could claim that your spam filter ate someone's email? Ah, plausible deniability …
Spam killed email? Complaining about spam is something I only hear from people who don't use gmail. Prior to that I had a yahoo address. I still login a couple of times a year to keep it alive. Very occasionally I see a relevant message there but really it's 90% spam.I can't believe how bad yahoo still is for spam.
Also don't blame the spammer for spam. Blame people. Fact is, there wouldn't be spam if it didn't work. The ugly truth is that one person in a million who can't find porn or Viagra on the Internet by themselves pays for all the spam.
Facebook is obviously big now for communication but don't write off SMS yet because it has one thing all the messaging wannabes still don't: ubiquity.
Of course the fact that AT&T charges me 25 cents per SMS sent AND RECEIVED (no other country does this to my knowledge; certainly Australia and Europe don't) or I have to pay $90 for a pretty basic level of service (ludicrously high by OECD standards) is another story entirely...
Also don't blame the spammer for spam. Blame people. Fact is, there wouldn't be spam if it didn't work. The ugly truth is that one person in a million who can't find porn or Viagra on the Internet by themselves pays for all the spam.
Facebook is obviously big now for communication but don't write off SMS yet because it has one thing all the messaging wannabes still don't: ubiquity.
Of course the fact that AT&T charges me 25 cents per SMS sent AND RECEIVED (no other country does this to my knowledge; certainly Australia and Europe don't) or I have to pay $90 for a pretty basic level of service (ludicrously high by OECD standards) is another story entirely...
Spam is really not an issue anymore. I've got some mail adresses that would receive hundreds of spam mails per day (those addresses are older than a decade now).
With fairly simple means I can block almost all of those mails on my own mailserver with practically zero false positives. In fact, the false positive rate was so low that I now directly reject those mails during the SMTP dialog. This frees me from checking my spam folder, and at the same time gives senders of legitimate mails (false positives) a notification that their mail has not been delivered.
With fairly simple means I can block almost all of those mails on my own mailserver with practically zero false positives. In fact, the false positive rate was so low that I now directly reject those mails during the SMTP dialog. This frees me from checking my spam folder, and at the same time gives senders of legitimate mails (false positives) a notification that their mail has not been delivered.
This sounds like a great setup. Would you mind sharing the details?
I mostly use standard settings of Postfix and some extensions, nothing fancy. Some things that my mailserver's config does:
- Wait 15 seconds until responding on the SMTP port. For real mailservers that's not a problem, but spammers typically use a very low timeout as lots of their mailadresses are invalid (and mailservers often don't even exist anymore).
- Enforce some SMTP protocol characteristics. E.g., spammers often try to "pipeline" all their data directly after connection establishment. "Real" mailservers don't do this (at least not until the remote server explicitly states that it supports pipelining). So we can just reject the connection if this occurs.
- Use Greylisting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greylisting). Disadvantage: Seems to cause problems with some mailservers.
- Use zen.spamhaus.org blacklist. Disadvantage: There may be some false positives, but have not encountered them so far. You can mitigate disadvantages of Greylisting and the Spamhaus blacklist by not using the blacklist for a accept/reject decision, but for a greylisting/no-greylisting decision. So "good" IPs aren't greylisted, and dubious IPs must pass the Greylisting check.
- Strictly enforce SPF if the sender's domain configured it with "-all". This blocks all the rolex.com spam.
- Not yet, but I will use this soon: Add support for Spamhaus' SWL whitelist and do no further Spam checks for messages from trusted IPs.
- If a message passes all those checks use Spamassassin for a content check. We can allow a pretty high Spamassassin here as most spam mails have been blocked in the previous steps. By using Spampd with Spamassassin, Spamassassin can reject messages during the SMTP dialog. In addition, Spamassassin is configured to use Razor, to detect "known" spam messages.
- Wait 15 seconds until responding on the SMTP port. For real mailservers that's not a problem, but spammers typically use a very low timeout as lots of their mailadresses are invalid (and mailservers often don't even exist anymore).
- Enforce some SMTP protocol characteristics. E.g., spammers often try to "pipeline" all their data directly after connection establishment. "Real" mailservers don't do this (at least not until the remote server explicitly states that it supports pipelining). So we can just reject the connection if this occurs.
- Use Greylisting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greylisting). Disadvantage: Seems to cause problems with some mailservers.
- Use zen.spamhaus.org blacklist. Disadvantage: There may be some false positives, but have not encountered them so far. You can mitigate disadvantages of Greylisting and the Spamhaus blacklist by not using the blacklist for a accept/reject decision, but for a greylisting/no-greylisting decision. So "good" IPs aren't greylisted, and dubious IPs must pass the Greylisting check.
- Strictly enforce SPF if the sender's domain configured it with "-all". This blocks all the rolex.com spam.
- Not yet, but I will use this soon: Add support for Spamhaus' SWL whitelist and do no further Spam checks for messages from trusted IPs.
- If a message passes all those checks use Spamassassin for a content check. We can allow a pretty high Spamassassin here as most spam mails have been blocked in the previous steps. By using Spampd with Spamassassin, Spamassassin can reject messages during the SMTP dialog. In addition, Spamassassin is configured to use Razor, to detect "known" spam messages.
[deleted]
[deleted]
So anybody here not use email?
Email simply addresses one of the most basic needs of human communication: sending a written message to another person.