Email Intuition
by Imran Ali
Interestingly, prior to Debi’s trip to Orange Mixr a few days ago and her extensive analysis of the decline of email, there’d been some weak signals that serious people were beginning to address this topic quite publicly, speculating on the future of what was the internet’s principle messaging format.
Most notably, Union Square Ventures partner, Fred Wilson, gathered a group of individuals - including former Microsoft Exchange head-guru Tom Evslin - to brainstorm the future of email in a session procatively titled ‘SMTP is dead, long live SMTP!’. Fred’s group also included luminaries such as Matt Blumberg, Brad Feld, Phil Hollows and Jeff Pulver.
The trigger for this activity seemed to be various public discussions regarding the evolution of large webmail services into a consumer’s principle social graph and an interesting article from Slate. Here’s a round up of the most interesting commentary…
- The Death of Email - Slate.com
- Thinking Aloud - Tom Evslin
- SMTP is dead, long live SMTP - Fred Wilson
- Messaging, Not Email - Fred Wilson
That last post, really sums up the debate - the discussion is really about the evolution of messaging as it shifts from one form and medium to another, driven by ethnographic, social and technological shifts.
