luis suarez goes cold turkey

Luis Suarez has given up email. Well, not quite - he's taking a harm minimisation / gradual reduction approach. Luis has now crossed the peak email threshold. I'm sure it's nice and sunny there. I hope the rest of us can join him soon.

Meanwhile just one more hit, just one...

i am spam

I accidently cc:ed myself into an email I sent and it ended up in my spam folder.

Is YahooMail trying to tell me something?

You've got (more) mail

Dave talks about email here and here, most of which I agree with - apart from the assertion that I'm starting a crusade - "Follow me to reclaim the lands Information Righteousness from the Infidels of Email!". I do think we need to put email in its place - and it does have a place. However, as Dave indicates, that place is far smaller than the area it currently occupies.

The two crucial changes (which incidentally are the first on Dave's list) that need to happen are:

1. Reducing the use of attachments. Sending out hotlinks for fixed documents or update notifications for documents being modified via a wiki is fine. But this will be a big jump for many organisations where the main content collaboration tool is email + MS Word with "track changes" turned on. The exception to this might be documents transferred between organisations - i.e. you can send & receive attachments from external parties but not internal ones.

2. Broadcast emails. It's here that an unholy pact has developed between managers and their subordinates. Managers First: Communicating things is hard. You probably need to do it several different ways. And then you need check that people have both understood your message and are willing and able to act on it (if they don't need to act on it then why the hell are you telling them?). This takes a lot of time and it's generally much easier to fire out an ambiguous email to hundreds of people. Subordinates Second: Paying attention to senior people is hard. And they may ask you to do crazy things. Saying that you didn't read it on the portal or you weren't at the meeting or that you missed that email are great ways to avoid direct conflict with your manager (or their manager or their etc). There are times when broadcast emails are appropriate but they are comparatively rare.

Given the growing number of tools, we need to be clear which tool we are going to use for what. Developing post-email (but not anti-email) policies and practices is a critical part of this.

Collaborative Mindmapping

Thanks to Kim, I've been playing with mind42 - a collaborative mindmapping tool. Based on one of my current obsessions, I have put together a mind map on email.

Feel free to dip in and have a play around (N.B. you have to sign up).

UPDATE: Unfortunately, it looks like I need to imvite you to join so you can edit. If you would like to do so, please drop me a line.

Peak email (2)

Patrick talks about the death of email and points to this article by Chad Lorenz. Email usage has already peaked for US teens. The rest of us will take a while to catch up but it can't be far away.

When I reflect on over a decade of online use and abuse (my masters thesis in '97 looked at the use of internet technology by information brokers), email has kept me in touch with existing friends but it has rarely allowed me to widen my social circle. Bulletin boards & chat sites did that (around such topics as UK indie music, chaos magick and, er, library studies).

I suspect the most valuable thing about email going forward will be having an email address to do other things with (not necessarily send or receive emails) - possibly tied to a mobile phone number.

We need to blow up the inbox and turn it into something new.

Peak email

We may be about to reach peak email soon. Unlike peak oil, this will not be as a result of supply constraints. The well of those willing to send you emails about cosmetic surgery and stocktips remains seemingly bottomless. What will happen is that more and more people will use alternative tools (substitution) for collaboration & communication. And spam email as a % of total email traffic will continue to rise. Until all that's left in your in-box will be fake lottery wins and viagra ads.

Email is great but it's fungible.

35 trillion emails - and they're all yours

Alex picks up on the email post and indicates that if you cross reference that with the number of actual net users it jumps to 79 per day. If we take this a step further, then what is the distribution of emails by user? I suspect it may be some kind of power law - with a small number of addresses sending and receiving the bulk of the email and a large proportion of the population sending and receiving very little.


There is also probably an asymmetry - those sending the bulk of the emails are not the same as those receiving them.

Alex makes a point about email overload. Email has been a victim of its own success. And it's impact over the last 15 years has been revolutionary. But we need to think about the shape of the post-email age. Is it going to be dizzying mess of email AND IM AND wikis AND other stuff..?

@

I think I sent my first email back in 1993. That period is all a bit hazy. I think I was doing it for a friend. But that could just be post-hoc self-justification.

About 35 trillion emails will be sent this year. That is approximately 17 emails a day for every person on this planet. Somewhat depressingly about 40% of these (7 per person) are spam.

This compares with 620 billion SMS texts in the first quarter of 2007 (which will mean 3 trillion for the year presumably). Or the 167 billion minutes of international telephone calls made in 2005.

That's a whole lot of talking going on. (N.B. I'd love to know the total number of phone calls made worldwide 2007 - anyone got that data?)

Which makes the number of blogs, wikis, etc out there look pretty puny.