The future of Web apps will see the death of e-mail

MIAMI--The way people have been talking about e-mail at the Future of Web Apps conference, you'd think it were a cell phone carrier or a domestic airline. It's antiquated, it's backward, and everybody hates it.

Kevin Marks, a Google engineer and Technorati veteran, said in a talk about the company's OpenSocial project and Social Graph APIs that e-mail is a "strange legacy idea."

"E-mail has died away for a group of users. For the younger generation, they don't use e-mail," he said, talking about the young Web users who have started to abandon e-mail for Facebook messaging and mobile texting. "They see it as this noisy spam-filled thing that annoys them every day...they see it as how you talk to the university, how you talk to the bank." Marks pointed to technologies like OpenID that promote the notion that online identities these days are defined by so much more than e-mail addresses--URLs and social-networking profiles, to name a few.

Marks wasn't the only one expounding upon e-mail's suckiness. Earlier in the day, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg inferred that overwhelming volumes of spam were making Web users explore options other than e-mail.

And when a lively group of Web 2.0 elite (including Mullenweg, Digg's Kevin Rose, Pownce's Leah Culver, and Flickr's Cal Henderson) tackled a panel led by TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld that involved creating the concept for a new Web app in 45 minutes, their end result was a product that would make e-mail less of a headache by making sure that users reply to everything. (It was done in 45 minutes, so the specifics weren't totally ironed out.)

To top it all off, when I had a meeting with Marks on Friday morning, we used Twitter direct messaging rather than e-mail to confirm the time and location.

That was before Twitter suffered a downage when the start-up's architect, Blaine Cook, was giving a talk later in the day at FOWA and his phone kept ringing with calls from the site's server administrators. Twitter's unreliability is well-known, and certainly calls into question the fact that all these messaging start-ups and social-networking features that are supposedly killing e-mail still might not be stable enough to overhaul the way we communicate.

The recent high-profile e-mail provider crashes, however, provide a counterpoint.

[amandachuck]

.Mac + mail.app = no spam...

well, not no spam, but very, very, very little. and very few non-
spams end up in the trash, and it's easy to find them!

it's not email's fault that there are bad ISPs and bad clients out
there.

[Maclover1]

Most email providers

have killed off SPAM. I get Zero Spam with G-mail....NONE at all.
Of course Google bought Postini which is a rock solid product.

I dont think I got much of any back when I used hotmail last year
either.

[sevenalive]

What?

Facebook and myspace messages are freaking emails, or Personal Messages. Its the same damn thing, and ya u do get spam messages on myspace and facebook, from apps and spam accounts.

This article and whoever thinks that myspace and facebook messaging is going to replace email are all retarded.

[AeroJonesy]

Not the future, but a function of age

Younger folk may be forgoing email for messaging through Internet applications, but I don't see them as a replacement for email. People migrate through social networking sites as they get older. They are going to want a central address where they can always be reached - similar to the reasoning behind mobile phone number portability.

Apps may be good for quick short messages to arrange meetings or phone calls, and for casual conversation, but they aren't going to be a replacement for true email accounts.

[sevenalive]

also

Twitter? This is so stupid, just because 15 year old girls do it, doesn't mean the rest of society does. Myspace and Facebook are mostly for chicks, guys don't really do it. I have them both, i don't login often, i only have it so high school friends can find me (i am 20.5 now). The only guys on those sites are trying to add as many girls as their friends then try to get their number, lets be realistic here.

DO you see the logic here? Oh so i gotta create an account at (w/e) and message you. Sounds like email, but email is better. At least with email, i only need your email address, not your username + site your at, then gotta create an account, then add as friend, then after approval we can EMAIL each other using their own private system.

[rcrusoe]

Email is dead

Right, just don't tell that to corporate America who consider it
second only to oxygen.

And what's this about spam being a problem? Spam was
eliminated in 2006.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/24/tech/main595595.
shtml

[42istheanswer]

right

about corporate. You wanna mess with someones karma turn off their email. Facebook, MySpace and the like are fads. Youngsters like it cuz it's cool and the fuddy duddy's are boring email users. They'll graduate to email eventually. Their paycheck will depend on it.

[johnwbaxter--2008]

Web 2.0--let's see

Let's see. ActiveX vulnerabilities (including social network site
image uploaders). JavaScript: designed to be insecure. Flash
vulnerabilities. Quicktime vulnerabilities (how many updates this
year?). RealPlayer vulnerabilities.

Sounds like a perfect recipe for replacing email.

(I didn't mention Silverlight: a great test of whether Microsoft is
serious about security: new product built in the new era of
security assurance process. Too soon to tell whether it moves
up the to the first paragraph, or not.)

[EricHP2]

Javascript

Javascript is only insecure if you code it wrong. Like using GET
instead of POST. Not implementing public and private keys, and
so on.

Most email clients only use a normal transfer protocol.(Except
when logging in.) Meaning their security is only as good as
public and private keys. Thus, Javascript isn't weaker than them.

Plugins weren't ever meant to be secure. As you said, their not.

ActiveX can be turned off, and only IE 6 and below uses it for
XMLHttpRequest. And is IE specific. So why would use it.

[Commander_Spock]

"That was before Twitter suffered a downage...

... when the start-up's architect, Blaine Cook, was giving a talk later in the day at FOWA and his phone kept ringing with calls from the site's server administrators..." Have you ever tried "IBM's Lotus Sametime Instant Messaging and Conferencing"?

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/lotus/category/uc2/

[Maclover1]

yeah I have

its a SAD POS, and thank god we just ditched it for Office
Communicator and Live Communications server. We through Notes
6.0 mail as well....BUH BYE!!!! Notes 6.0 was/is the worst email
client ever created.

I dont know anyone at work that misses it.

[microsoft slayer]

I get Spam in my Myspace and Facbook inbox/comments too...

Instead of making the wheel better, these idiots are trying to re-invent the wheel...lame!

[kgsbca]

"the younger generation doesn't use email"

I don't think all of the "younger generation" doesn't use email, just the ones who don't have jobs. email is a pretty useful form of communication, and it will go away just after phones die out. it may not be the best way to tell of of your friends what you think at any given moment, but it works well for point-to-point communications.

These comments sound like the "younger generation" in the last decade that responded to challenges to their their dot-com excel business plans with "you just don't get it". Yeah, the web was new, but not every site was destined to be profitable. And the "web 2.0" isn't the answer to everything.

sorry for the extensive use of " ", it's just that way too many people talk in cliches.

[Stufiano]

How many letters have you mailed recently?

The post office was an popular communication hub, bu not it's only for bills and very formal communications.

I love your scorn from those of us classified as the "younger generation". Yeah, I use email, for official things but how many things are OFFICIAL? How profitable will a site be if people only use it for official communication? Not very.

Personally, I find email, well, lonely. It's not quick or convenient to utilize "outlook" or yahoo mail. No one checks their email on a regular basis [not even my professors]. Only way it can survive is through cellphones and data plans are outrageous. Adding $20-40 extra dollars to my monthly bill is not likely for me. I pay for college, gas, housing, etc -- leaving no room for extras like that.

Im/texting is more viable since its cheaper [http://around 10-15 extra per month for unlimited msgs.|http://around 10-15 extra per month for unlimited msgs.] and fills email's niche quite nicely.

And for online communication, social networks and im work better than email for convenient comm. with quicker, more engaged feedback. And, yes, you CAN type as much in im as an email.

Times change, so does communication.

[hunter_jc]

Good luck with your job using facebook.

Yeah i would love to see how the "younger" generation will tell their boss, Can everyone just have a facebook account so we don't have to use email?

[Stufiano]

Really?

Seeing as major employers are ALREADY ON facebook and using for communication, I fail to see you point.

Could you clarify it for me?

[vaporland]

How will you sign up for facebook without email?

Last time I checked, all of those nifty Web 2.0 message delivery mechanisms required email addresses in order to register.

Call me old fashioned, but I think the ubiquitousness of email will endure at least a little longer.

Chatting, et. al., has its place; so does email.

And as others have noted, with a little effort and forethought, you can virtually eliminate spam.

[photolarry]

Agreed

Email will not die. Its the main way businesses still communicate. And for that matter friends and family are going to be using it a long time too. Some of us do not use more tech savy ways of messages like twitter that are more reserved for geeky nerdy types (like myself).

[fejack]

Indeed

Email has been around intranets since 1961. It is an old, yet proven technology. The only thing it might need is an upgrade, which should definitely include encryption and identification keys to protect users from eyesdropping and plagues such as spam.

[WJeansonne]

These guys are living in a dream world.

I'm starting to get errant text messages on my phone now including to sex related offerings via text spam and two miskeyed telephone numbers. I can see full-blown spawn just around the corner.

[JohnBarbagallo]

E-mail's dying?!

Umm, not at all in my opinion. E-mail is still being used for the most part and we will not see it die anytime soon, I assure you.

[thattalldude]

I'm trying to ditch email

I've been trying to get rid of email for several months. While I cannot yet completely get rid of it, mostly because of my blogs, I am slowly getting rid of everything in email that I don't "NEED" email for. While Facebook and MySpace may not have the world's most perfect messaging system, they are a start. I truly believe that Facebook's messages will evolve into an email-like system, and sooner than we think. If Facebook and MySpace make a compatible API for their message setups, email could quickly decline.

[ARod53]

the more things change...

ok, let's assume I can get everyone to sign up for the same social platform (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) or can get all of the disparate systems to develop a means for their systems to inter-communicate (don't we have something like that today?) and now I can communicate w/ everyone I know or new folks I meet via my social platform ... didn't I just replace email with "new" email? Doesn't this sound as revolutionary and well-thought out as New Coke?

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Great article -- 100% hype, 0% vision.

[Stufiano]

really?

Seeing as major employers are ALREADY ON facebook and using for communication, I fail to see you point.

Could you clarify it for me?