I think we are just having a conversation over here about language issues, because when I put it together the fact I said “E-mail can become extinct” does not necessarily mean it will be, does it? Or have a miss something in here? What I meant with that sentence is that if e-mail is not capable of evolving with the times and challenges that we face nowadays, then it is going to have a tough time surviving it all.

I am not saying it’s dead, I am saying that if it doesn’t move on in the innovation path it will not have much time to make it through. And if not, look at how much e-mail younger generations are sending out versus other types of interactions. They are just not using it and those younger generations are the ones coming into the workforce rather strong, already, wanting to be as productive as ever with their collaboration and knowledge sharing tools. And, guess what?, e-mail is not one of them, because it hasn’t evolved for decades! That’s what I was trying to say with that quote.

I just put together another blog post where I developed further on this topic and the blog post you put together and detailed there why I feel this is also a unique opportunity for applications like Lotus Notes 8 to drive through that innovation, which in a way is already happening. Have a look into it and let me know what you think.

Katie, thanks for the comments. You bring in a good point, indeed, and it is not the first time that someone asks me about it. The short answer is, YES!! It has increased tremendously the amount of interactions I have been exposed to, but that is EXACTLY what I am after! I would rather prefer to have all of those interactions than e-mail, because that means the conversations are out there, in the open, public spaces, ready for everyone, not just me, to contribute!

Why am I not counting them and include them as part of the report? Well, because it would fail the purpose of me being productive. There are far too many to keep a count of them. With all of the tools I use and on a daily basis keeping track of it all with my Feed reader, it would become far too onerous for me to count them. Besides, I am not worried about increasing those interactions outside e-mail. I want it that way. It makes me smarter hanging out there with other folks who I want to collaborate and share my knowledge with. So the more, the better.

Atul, thanks for the kind comments, my friend! Exactly! You just brought in one of the lines I use for my pitch. We are on the stage where we are just addicted to e-mail, and like with every single addiction, it is always difficult to stop or quit altogether. So I feel this very same way about e-mail (First thing we check in the morning, after lunch, before leaving work, right after dinner at home, etc. etc. That, to me, is an addiction and I just want OUT of it!)

With regards to your final comments, yes, my feed readers are becoming slowly, but steadily, my new inbox, but with a huge difference. The feed readers are just notifications of content available out there in public, open spaces, where I can contribute or not, depending on how much other folks have gotten involved, whereas with e-mail it is *me* the one who needs to do all of the work, specially that one delegated to me, instead of co-llaborating together. That is a huge difference, in my opinion, and why I feel that RSS / Atom feeds are perhaps so undervalued, when they shouldn’t! But I will expand more on this at a later time…

Thanks again for the comments, folks, and for dropping by!

Actually fascinating. I must admit it would be a little difficult to stay off email, but then, i thought the same thing about quitting smoking, too!

By the by, i would be interested to know about folks on the receiving end … how are they tracking changes to a blog, for instance. Or are we simply replacing email client with feedreaders?

Cheers, Atul.

I was wondering if you could speak to whether there was an increase in other types of traffic into your life? Some would argue that twitter and IM are even more intrusive than email, on some level. Was there a corresponding jump in the amount of non-email online communication? This seems like a vital piece of information when evaluating the success of your venture.

Thanks for the offline discussion — I will try to find some time to ping you today, but yesterday was quarter-close and so actually, asynchronous communication is my best non-time-sensitive tool at the moment.

The quarrel I had with your article was the second-to-last sentence where you said “E-mail can become extinct, if not repurposed altogether, even at big companies like I.B.M.” In your reply to me, as well as here in your blog entry, you insist that you are not saying that e-mail is dead… but “can become extinct” has the same meaning as “dead”.

Otherwise, we are generally in agreement, and while I haven’t read every week’s installment of your project, I have actually been tracking to see what comes of it. There are absolutely many ways companies can change their use of e-mail to be more meaningful and less-cluttered, and I appreciate your efforts to champion that mindset.