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Surprising Science — November 25, 2011

Email Is Dead. What’s Next?

“We don’t think a modern messaging system is going to be email,” said Mark Zuckerberg recently. He isn’t the first to suggest that email is dead and he definitely won’t be the last.

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What’s the Latest Development?

As an innovative messaging system, email is dead. And for anyone whose job feels taken over by their inbox, this won’t come as bad news. Social media programers are already looking past email toward a communication media that better suits the demands of business and casual interaction. While email served as a good point-to-point too, social media has shown us the advantage of flow tools such as wikis, micro-blogging and internal social networks.

What’s the Big Idea?

Email is growing, to be sure. “Technology market researchers Radicati see the number of email accounts worldwide growing from 3.1bn in 2011 to nearly 4.1bn by 2015.” But its influence in our communication is set to decline, say business professionals and social media gurus. Dave Coplin, head of Microsoft’s Envisoneers team, says: “I think that email is dead when it comes to social media in the same way that snail mail was dead when it came to email.”

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