When you go online and need to get a hold of somebody, what is your first thought on how to reach them? Five years ago the answer was simple, you would simply go to your E-mail account be it AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, or any other E-mail server, and you would send the person an e-mail. E-mail is a simple concept, instead of mailing somebody a letter, that will take them days to get, send an e-mail that takes seconds.
Now revert back to today's society, if you need to get a hold of your best friend, who lives on the other side of the state, do you E-mail them today? More often than not, you will log on to your Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, or whatever other social networking site you use, and send them the message. I had written in last week's columns about the use of Social Media and the growing number of people who are using it today to share information, but I never touched upon the creature it destroyed in the process, the E-mail. But what exactly happened to E-mail, on it's way out?
During the early days of the Internet, E-mail was the standard of communication and you had many servers to choose from as your E-mail host including AOL, Yahoo, and Hotmail. If you were online, you had an e-mail account, it was as simple as that. The Internet was a communications tool and its vessel was the E-mail, which you would use to send messages to various places around the world in minutes. However, during this time the Marketer came in and knew that they had something here. A mailbox that people were sure to check every day, if not multiple times during the day? Hmmm...he thought. Shortly after, the Newsletter was born and then Spam. Spam might not have been the deathblow of E-mail, however E-mail's decline started shortly afterwards. Spam was a great concept in the beginning, send an advertisement directly to the customer in their e-mail. Interested in the book deals at Amazon? Sign up to Amazon's newsletter and get up to the date updates on their latest deals. People check their e-mail almost everyday, why not? Well what started off as an e-mail once a day became multiple e-mails being sent daily, many times from companies that the account holder had not even visited online or even heard of. To avoid this many e-mail servers created what is now known as Spam boxes, to help receive and filter your e-mail, however this technology is still a work in progress as important e-mails can sometimes be filtered as well. The average person, to combat this threat also started creating multiple E-mail address', one professional and one commercial, in order to filter the Spam that was being sent to their accounts. If a website asked for an e-mail address, you would just give them the dummy one, to filter out the span and try and avoid the company's E-mails to be sitting beside an E-mail of the Sale at Macy's next week.
E-mail is still considered, the proper business tool when talking to clients, however it has lost its personal persona for many people. E-mail might of lost it's soul with Spam but it lost it's heart with Social Networking, as social Networking soon became the choice when talking with friends and contacts. Instead of having multiple accounts, most people have one account in which they can customize and edit, to fit your own personal needs. Social networking also created status updates and a million other ways you an communication your emotions, thoughts and feelings to people without having to send an e-mail. The forefathers of Social Networking learned a lot from E-mail, on the pros and cons of communication. If you do not want to talk to somebody simply do not add them or make your profile private. Want to get a hold of a company and not just be "another e-mail"? Send them a message on Twitter and at least allow yourself the tranquility of knowing that they got it and have read it, instead of it sitting in a box unread, as many E-mailers do.
Does E-mail still have its purpose in this day of Social Networking? Yes it does, just like it's predecessor the mailbox, but how much longer is the question.
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