typo: What we can to combat
We also need to have important email address besides a normal one. To that important address only those we have permitted will have the right to write to. I mean, if we use white list, only the selected ones can email us.
You know what else failed ? Books. There are way too many of them for one person to read. Websites too. And forums. We should close them all down, since they are just becoming more and more.
Jeff, the reason lots of people contact you via email and not IM is because you posted your email on this page, but not your IM names. If you did, your IM would become as useless and flooded as your inbox. The reason your inbox is full is not because email sucks, it’s because A LOT OF PEOPLE WANT TO TALK TO YOU.
IM and telephone instead of an email? So your force your recipient to react NOW, if it fits his time or not.
Going public instead of an email? So you share your company stuff with the whole world or your holiday planning with the rest of the department?
Btw a lot of my relatives, friends, and customers insist on using email to communicate. Avoiding email would mean avoiding comunicating with them.
@Jens, I’m with you. Most people write too many emails or IMs or Tweets because they a) don’t have enough work to do, b) too many people with not enough work to do have their contact info!
Ok, but what happens in a large corporate setting - especially in a company with a young demographic? It seems like IM would become a productivity drain than a useful communication tool. IMs are much more intrusive/disruptive than email. In the case of Twitter, it seems like you have to do a lot of digging or searching to find the information you’re after.
I think e-mail has its place. Short, sweet, and to the point emails can be very useful. If it’s too hard to write an email, or it’s going to take too long to write out, set up a meeting or have a phone call.
@Robert: The wiki idea is appealing, and we’ve played around with that at work. It hasn’t really taken off, so I can’t judge from experience. Have you used one in your job?
Your point about reply-all chains and the expectation that you’re up on multiple projects is definitely something I struggle with, too.
But I think email is decent at that: I can prioritize/skim/ignore those chains if I am swamped, and then go back to the chain and play catch-up in short order if needed.
I defend email here only in relative terms, though. Email has problems, and it doesn’t scale well. But I don’t see how IMs and Twitter can replace them as the article (or at least the Tantek quote) seems to suggest.
No matter what the medium, effective communication that keeps you up to date on all those projects is going to take time and effort. Maybe THAT’s what really doesn’t scale well?
Anyone know any good tales of how a wiki was effectively used to replace email? I wonder about how that would play out.
One problem is that your observation and that of these other public personas are all hugely biased by the fact that you are public personas. Thus, you get a lot of email, a lot more than the average, and the ratio between received and sent is ridiculously high. For normal people, email is not necessarily broken.
Why would someone send a message to just one person when she could send it to thousands?? Well, maybe because she just needs to send a message to that one person, and nobody else will care. That’s a pretty common situation 
My 2 cents.
The one thing hinted at but not directly said is not always just the mail that we receive that snows us under, it is the bulk of mail that we generate that comes back and bites us, just because it is so easy to send, ie its your own fault!
I blogged about this, but it took me a lot longer to say that there
http://www.blog.stackingit.com/2008/11/why-email-makes-you-think-you-are.html
Very amusing post. I currently have 1107 unread emails in my inbox. I read about 10% of the junk I get on a daily basis. I set aside 3 periods in my day to scan, digest and respond to emails. What I find amusing is if the person sending it thinks it is earth shattering and I don’t get to it immediately people will call me on the phone and ask Did you get my email?. My response is usually, Well if you pressed send, then yes I got it. Then we discuss whatever it was and that usually takes 4 minutes. Eventually my auto archive will get the older mail out of my box. Of course it bears mentioning that because of the department where I sit I am on 3 major distribution lists that have nothing to do with the job I do. And those lists have a tendency to just get hammered at times.
My major email annoyance is when people respond to an entire distribution list with Thanks! or with what is obviously individual communications back to the entire list. Or the never ending thread that slowly morphs into something completely different than the subject line states. Or somebody picks up a giant thread that you were never involved with in the first place, is months old and then references something like 50 or 60 responses ago and expects you to know what it is all about.
IM can be intrusive, however I use the status flag to let people know when I am busy. If I am marked as busy, I am and I do not respond until I get to a stopping point.
Same with the phone, if I am busy and it rings and it isn’t one of my bosses then I will let it go to voice mail, and sometimes even if it is one of those bosses.
These communications tools are just that, if you allow them to rule your life they will and you can’t ever get a decent amount of work done.
Email would be better if it were better organized.
This could be achieved manually if everyone with whom you correspond behaves according to some standard convention or etiquette… but they don’t and they never will.
Subject lines, if provided at all, are often mostly meaningless.
The body may discuss multiple topics or issues.
Forwards and replies happen arbitrarily out of chronological order.
My office uses Outlook and Exchange. Like with many email systems emails can be organized into a hierarchy folders. Each email may go into only one folder.
This is a problem. Often messages should be classified to multiple folders such as a multiple intersecting projects, products, divisions, and departments.
Google’s Gmail handles multiple folders (called labels) well. But, my iPhone does not–even when synchronizing with my Gmail account.
Gmail does a good job of organizing chains of email. But, it fails if the subject gets changed. So it’s lose-lose. Either keep using the stupid, off-topic subject line, or lose the chain grouping.
Quick check here:
Private account: In: 4897, Out: 83.
Business account: In: 320, Out: 15.
Right, Jeff. That’s even two orders of magnitude for my private conversation. 
The problem with IM is that I usually don’t want to be disturb while I’m doing work (or playing a game) and IM almost means Instant mInterrupt with flashing icons and people waiting for responses in less than 10 seconds. Email on the other hand do not interrupt your workflow, you check your email when you want.
Twitter is the ideal communication method I think, but it could be improved a lot, for exemple I think I should be able to classify my posts on personal/work/other things (with some kind of tag system), so my friends don’t get messages that I’m doing function X and my coworkers don’t get messages that I’m going to get drunk tonight (unless someone really wants to see that). I also think that there should be twitter profiles that are not for people, but for subjects, and anyone that follows that subject can post on that twitter profile.
For exemple a Jeff could have a twitter for StackOverflow project which he and the other devs posts about the stuff they are doing about that project and another for his blog which he disserts about his new blog posts, maybe put comments responses on twitter
Couldn’t disagree more. To me, email is perfectly useful, whereas IMs have been a useless annoyance whenever I tried them. And for the life of me, I can’t see the point of twitter.
Email does not imply debt to me so there is no bankruptcy. I feel no moral imperative to answer email, the phone, the door… These thing exist for my convenience to allow me an enhanced interface to the world. Part of this enhancement is the wall factor. Not all email is meant to be replied to nor is it inherently impolite to not answer email.
mind you I filter my email even after spam filters. Office newsletter goes directly into the bin. Important things get sent to a separate folder/label and skip my inbox entirely. These last are one of the few things I may feel obliged to take action on. Everything in my inbox is for my entertainment.
I think that what people fail to realise is that we need ot learn to filter. We have to learn it as children with regards to sight, sound, smell, touch…The same applies to any information/data source. It’s not the email that failed.
@Patrick: exactly.
IM and Twitter are the devil. If you use them, you’ll decay your ability to formulate your thoughts in the written word. Email is much better.
Also, in a corporate setting, email has a gravitas that twitter doesn’t.
Twitter: OMG, IBM, let’s set up a meeting with Bill Gates!!!1!!1! -Intel
It also lends itself a lot better to creating a record of your communication with clients, so that if something goes critically wrong, you can CYA.
We won a lawsuit because they claimed I never mailed something to them – I produced an email showing that I offered to fedex it to them, and they didn’t respond (even though they responded to that email on a different point, so they couldn’t claim they didn’t read it). I can’t imagine the same thing working (legally) in an IM context.
Agree.
Not only e-mails, now we have discussion boards, blogs and blog comments to read as daily ritual as well.
We need some software to handle that. Fast!
Also, it pisses people off when you don’t answer them on IM.
I come back to my computer to find:
Hello?
Hello?
Alo?
Heya
Hi
You there?
Hi?
dies
All from one guy.