Alex Iskold mentioned in his post that the new communication methods such as Twitter, Blogs, Forums, ToDo, Events, and CRM may be replacing e-mail. While this may seem true in some sense, I have a different view. I don’t think they will ever replace e-mail.
E-mail was designed to transmit and receive messages between two people. It wasn’t designed for broadcasting. The reason? They didn’t need to broadcast messages to unknown people because at that time it was meaningless. Very few people were online, and broadcasting messages that may interest only certain group of people would not mean much. You wouldn’t be able to find that many people. However things are different now. People are actually online, and broadcasting just became really meaningful. That’s why so many startups focusing on broadcasting messages are springing up.
However, broadcasting is different from communication.
Just as radio didn’t replace phones,
twitter, blog, and forum cannot replace e-mails.
Rather, if e-mail is to be replaced by something, it would be IM or SMS, and I think they are doing a pretty good job on it. I use IM(or SMS when I’m outside) to casually communicate with people that I know.
Likewise, ToDo’s, Events, or CRMs cannot replace e-mail. They are simply not the products in the same layer as e-mail. Just look at what’s happening. Let’s say you just updated your ToDo list, Events, or whatever on your CRM page. Every update is delivered to you via e-mail. Without e-mail. How do you expect to be notified? Again, this is where IM or SMS may replace e-mail also. It’s not the job of twitter, blog, and the all others mentioned above.
So, my point is clear. Twitter, Blogs, Forums, ToDo lists, Events, and CRM are not competing with e-mail. They are media. Media do not compete with communication devices. They compete with other media like radio and TV. Those who do not realize this will fall into the trap of wrong positioning.
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