The death of email

Never underestimate the power of my Technology Rankings algorithm. Last year, EMAIL was scored. It scored low. In fact, it's in my Dinosaur Watch.

Do not cry for me. I wore your scorn like a badge of honor. And in successive posts, I've never once swayed from my prediction. Therefore, should we be surprised that Mashable has an article on some IBM scientist who is actively destroying his relationship with email, and succeeding, and leading the charge for others to do the same? (No, we shouldn't. I wasn't really asking.)

Email was designed before any mobile phone accessed the Internet. It is not real-time. It is not social. It is not hyperlocal. Email is a dinosaur. From the IBM'er:

Suarez ...decided he needed to prove to his colleagues that social software was the answer and not the problem. Two and a half years ago he began “a little experiment.”

“As a remote employee, I’m wanted to prove to everyone that I could keep working for the company without using e-mail, relying almost … exclusively on social software tools to communicate daily with my team members.”

His plan was to show his coworkers just how dependent they really were on e-mail, emphasizing how many times a day they were compelled to check it, and proving that it was no longer a productivity tool, but a procrastinator’s best friend.

He acknowledges that times have changed. Ten years ago, e-mail was absolutely necessary for business interactions. Yet in the last two and a half years, he’s advocated for social software to replace e-mail as the go-to communication method.

Rather than restricting file and data sharing conversations to personal inboxes, Suarez persuades employees to first share data more openly behind company firewalls, and then as they ease into the concept (and if it’s relevant), share it on wider social services.

“I’ve kept track of progress,” he says. “I’ve gone from 30 to 40 e-mails a day to an average of just 17 per week. Most of those are one-on-one private conversations, for which e-mail is still probably the best tool for anything sensitive or confidential.”