Tag Archives: e-mail

A colleague, IBMer Luis Suarez, wrote an article in the NYtimes on how he is using Social Networking tools to reduce the use of e-mail.  And I quote

E-mail can become extinct, if not repurposed altogether, even at big companies like I.B.M. An e-mail in-box no longer needs to be like Pandora’s box.

I am not sure whether I totally agree with this … there is still a place for e-mail.  As another IBMer Ed Brill say and I quote

Even if you move all of your collaboration to other tools, there still needs to be a prompt, a push, a tickle, an alert … something that draws you into the collaboration.

And this push or tickle as Ed calls it is usually via email. If somebody comments on a blog post of mine I get prompted about it via email.  If somebody follow me on Twitter I get informed via email.  If somebody send me a message via Facebook then I get informed via e-mail.

So to answer my own question, no I do not think so.  Yes it can reduce the volume of email (an I do not talk about all the spam) in your inbox but totally replace, no I do not think so.  I would love to hear your comments about it.