Why email - still the best there is on the Internet

On all sides there are voices: e-mail - a corpse. So, the business magazine BusinessWeek recently I wrote"E-mail is dead, at least so say in Silicon Valley." Co-founder of the project management system Asana Justin Rosenstein (Justin Rosenstein) and considers email «counterproductive instrument." A service creators Slack, Positioned as a replacement messenger and email, boasting that "saved the world from 70 million email».

Archaism email is considered not only the e-entrepreneurs, but many millenialy. For them, correspondence email - it's a pain.

Students do not see any point in the email. Young people think that there is a fast and convenient communication channels, what a stupid email.

So considers Vice-Chancellor of Exeter University, Professor Steve Smith.

But, despite all these premature (populist, advertising, absurd - underline) statements, a lot of people, I am convinced that the email - still the best there is on the Internet.

World Wide Web cockroach

Send an email - what could be easier? Aaron Cope Straupe

Straupe Aaron Cope (Aaron Straup Cope) - Senior Engineer National Design Museum Cooper-Hewitt. Any statements that the e-mail time has passed, he retorts simple argument: "Imagine how much it will cost you to search for alternative hardware and software solutions, as well as what will turn the rejection of the flexibility, which allows email».

Email - huge open, decentralized platform that can be built (and built) innovative projects. Email as a single ecosystem as an enclosed garden amid the ubiquitous networking and intrusive messaging services.

Email - it's a cockroach the World Wide Web. She will survive and adapt in spite of everything.

Evolution

We can not say that the email - static, unchanging instrument. Developing, functional e-mail quickly grew into a simple exchange of letters.

Let's look at history. During the formation of the commercial Internet e-mail it was for all users.

• news Feeds. Newsletters, alerts, direct marketing - e-mail box as a small private media.
• "Passport" user. Now the verification of identity on the Internet is mainly through Facebook and other social networks. But e-mail is still something of a passport or user registration. You want to have an electronic purse? Enter email! Make a purchase at Amazon? Enter email! Leave a message in the forum? Enter email! In addition, your email address could judge you as a professional. It was believed that a post on @ mail.ru give birth Nuba and freaks, while @ gmail.com - a sign of "advancement". Now a much more important role, for example, LinkedIn profile.
• The main means of communication. Electronic bulletin boards (BBS), chat rooms and forums, there are as many as email, but email has formed a personal connection between people. Nowadays, many ways to establish communication with a person of interest to you:. Friended to Facebook, subscribe to his Twitter, or Instagram, be added to Skype and so on. A noticeable trend: mobile application developers seeking to gain access to the contacts in the phonebook the user, and not from email (examples - WhatsApp, Telegram).
• Service for file sharing. Once FTP has lost popularity, and Dropbox and GoogleDrive not yet purchased, e-mail was the main method of digital document exchange. PDF, DOC, MP3 - all that is needed to send another person, attached to the letters.
• Business tool. Many companies do not represent work without e-mail. Email is also a means of communication between employees and channel of communication with partners and customers. Meanwhile, some organizations deliberately refuse to do business via email. Thus, the CEO of IT-corporation Atos introduced in 2011 for its employees taboo to correspond by email.

All this is supported (and supports) email viability. But the flip side of the popularity of e-mail have become spam and security threats. When a mailbox tied everything (from finance to intimate correspondence), high risk of becoming the object of fraud and drown in advertising messages.

It is obvious that many of the functions described herein email thing of the past. For example, it can not compete with cloud storage services. Also, for many it is more convenient login via social networks than via email. However, it is written off "the old lady" is an almost not worth it.

The future of e-mail

Email becomes what it was originally conceived - a platform for writing emails.

At least, so says columnist for The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal (Alexis Madrigal). Now by saying "e-mail", we mean too much. Email at some stage in their evolution and replaced telephone calls and personal meetings, and marketing messages, and more. But the time has come, said Madrigal, when a key in the phrase "e-mail" will be the second word. That deliver the mail? It is true: letters, invoices, brochures, newspapers and magazines. Such content will soon be your inbox.

Contribute to this e-mail services themselves. Thus, Gmail Priority Inbox automatically sorts mail (not spam) on the important and not so well Unroll.me It allows you to unsubscribe from unwanted mailings in semi-automatic mode. In other words, the time when the letter fell on the stream, and you had to spend hours to rake blockages in the mail, have been - email is becoming smarter.

Even annoying spam has become virtually invisible thanks to filters used e-mail services. But in other parts of the Internet "dust" more and more: promotional comments to articles, pages on social networks.

In addition, the process of receiving emails become much friendlier. Compare MS Outlook work and contemporary Gmail web interface and you will realize what I mean.

And the last. At that time, such as mobile versions of many sites are a mix of curves templates, "floating" banners and unreadable text, work with e-mail via mobile devices easily and nicely.

Output

Email, as a representative of the good old Web technologies, absorbs the best era of 2.0 chips. Modern e-mail quick and easy; its algorithm processes the source code, simplifying the incoming flow of information; it is beautifully rendered on mobile devices. It does not aspire to it all IT-companies?

But the main thing in the email - an open protocol. Email, for all its accessibility, is one of the most secure environment popular communication channels (especially if you're willing to make the extra steps to ensure security). According to Madrigal, in the "era of post-Snowden" hostile government in respect of anonymous communication channels, and the logic email is clear and accessible to all.

E-mail - this is the way to a less commercialized and less centralized Internet. Well, this wonderful "cockroach" World Wide Web is already live in all of our homes. Alexis Madrigal

And how do you feel about e-mail?