Replacement for email?

April 7, 2006 5:48 AM

Replacement for email?

While there are many good things about email, there are an increasing number of bad things about it. Without wanting to bias any answers, I'd simply be interested if anyone has found a replacement for email. If the situation is unusual, please feel free to describe it.

Basicially, if you used to use email daily, but now hardly use it at all, what do you use instead?

posted by krisjohn to computers & internet (13 comments total)

I've found that I really use e-mail thank to IM services. It beats the major drawback of spam and the like, but I suppose you can't always get in contact with a certain person. It certainly helps to be a teenager like myself I suppose.
posted by Serial Killer Slumber Party at 5:57 AM on April 7, 2006

Arghhh. Really = Rarely.

Maybe I shouldn't be communicating at all.
posted by Serial Killer Slumber Party at 5:58 AM on April 7, 2006

God, replace email with IM?

No, the point of email is that I get to think about an answer. F2F, phone, IM, all come with the implicit conversation metaphor -- ask and respond, in real time. Email, like mail, lets you think about your answer.

I agree that email is problematical, because of the degenerate economics. But I can't help but to compare it to Democracy -- the worst form of communications, except for all the others.
posted by eriko at 6:00 AM on April 7, 2006

maybe if you gave us a list of your pro's and con's about e-mail, we could come up with a better solution for you.

as for me, the vast majority of my communicating occurs on forums. they're a far more palatable way to render threads of information and since most are PHP scripts you can code any extra functionality you need yourself.
posted by mcsweetie at 6:34 AM on April 7, 2006

Although I use email as much as ever, I find that a lot of my personal interactions have shifted to IM. I am more or less logged into IM all day via my mobile phone (T-Mobile Sidekick^*). So it is easy for people to contact me that way, even though I am not actually monitoring my phone for instant messages constantly. What is interesting is how using IM this way has changed (somewhat) the implicit conversation metaphor.

Now, someone might IM me and ten minutes later I notice their message and get back to them. This then might lead into a real-time conversation.

Even more interesting is the fractured nature of conversations I have with others using IM on mobile devices. So, someone might IM me, I IM back a half hour later, but now they are busy doing something else. So a while later I get a response from them. Some time later I send a response and so on, until it so happens that we are both actively using IM as opposed to being logged in but involved with something else - at this point we shift into conversation. It is sort of an organic negotiation that supplements an email exchange with eventual real-time conversation, or replaces the typical email exchange of "I want to talk about X with you, is 1:100 good" "No how about 3:000" "I can try to be on IM at 4:00" etc.

I've noticed that especially among my younger contacts that I almost always get attempted contact via IM first (unless they need to send some sort of file).

I have less personal experience with but have certainly noticed that many people use something like LiveJournal posts/comments to have exchanges, arrange meetings, etc. that I would normally associate with email use.

* Full disclosure: I do some freelance work for Danger, the company behind the guts of the Sidekick.
posted by mikepop at 6:36 AM on April 7, 2006

I've seen lots of interesting discussions about how the failings of e-mail can be remedied; as eriko says, e-mail has a place, and that's not going to go away anytime soon.

Stuff like trusted senders, "conversation tokens", sender whitelists, etc. go some way to making the communication process more secure and trustworth, but may end up being a bit clumsy.

Text messages on mobile phones have taken off massively (perhaps apart from the US, so far!) - which is a kind of cross between an e-mail and an IM.
I tend to treat them more as an e-mail, in that I respond when convenient, and write in full plain English; other people I know use it more like IM, and hover over their phone waiting for a new message to appear - and then responding immediately in "txt spk". (Often over the course of messages bouncing back and forth, one can't help but wonder that it would have been much easier and quicker to just call up and chat!)
The only thing that's holding text messages back, IMO, is the awkward message entry process - although as predictive spelling become more prevalent and "clever", the process isn't as painful.
posted by Chunder at 6:38 AM on April 7, 2006

Don't worry about my needs, I want to hear about any "success stories" without self censorship. That said, please try to limit responses to details about replacing email, not not replacing it.
posted by krisjohn at 6:40 AM on April 7, 2006

I tried replacing emails with IM. It didn't work. Especially now, being at least 5 hours ahead of most of my friends (except for the friends in Australia), IM just isn't an option for having a viable conversation during the week, since most of them are just getting home from work as I am heading off to bed. And at work, e-mail provides a handy paper trail that an IM chat log really just doesn't cover all that well (although IM really does help to replace those little dinky emails like "I'm getting this exception, what does it mean?").

Having said that, these open ended types of questions on AskMe really irritate me.
posted by antifuse at 6:56 AM on April 7, 2006

I still use email plenty, but I also use myspace. While myspace has plenty of interface flaws, it does provide some advantages over email.

1. Less spam. Not none, but less. If someone's not in my address book they run the risk of being lost as spam when they email me.

2. Bulletins. People can post bulletins, so if I'm looking for something to do I can see who's having a party, where my favorite bands are playing, etc. This is a more passive form of many-to-many communication than sending out mass emails.

3. Blogs. If you have something to say that's not really a news bulletin, you can post in your blog. If you like, only your friends can read it. This is an even more passive form of many-to-many communication. Or many-to-none as the case may be.

4. If I don't have someone's email address, I have no easy way to look it up. With social networking sites, the whole point is you can find friends of friends easily.

(None of these advantages are unique to myspace, that just happens to be the site where most of my friends/acquaintances are)
posted by justkevin at 7:38 AM on April 7, 2006

I am very active in a local community based on a phpBB based web forum. phpBB has a 'private messaging' feature that has replaced email for a lot of the users. It's just a lot easier to click on a PM button for someone than trying to dig up an email address for them that you may or may not have.

It isn't a complete replacement. I do use email with some folks on the board and the board does not encompass everyone I need to communicate with, but it is replacing email in some instances. I'd also venture to guess that other members of the community use PMs in lieu of email more than I do.

This only works in the specific context of an active web forum community though.
posted by ursus_comiter at 8:05 AM on April 7, 2006

Knuth has switched to snail mail. But that seems to work best with a secretary.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:43 AM on April 7, 2006

"My secretary prints out all messages addressed to [e-mail] or [e-mail]..."

That's wrong in so many ways, one of them being that that's not really doing without email.
posted by krisjohn at 3:02 PM on April 7, 2006

I have replaced a lot of what used to be high-volume, high-noise email lists with blogs, which have the advantage of not clogging up my inbox, not interrupting me with items that might not be time-sensitive, and generally being easier to access, search, index, retrieve and recall over time than old email messages are.

This is also handy for friends who would otherwise be sending me funny links and forwards; I can just read their blogs to get the latest, and it's only when I have time to do so, not when they've decided to send it.
posted by anildash at 10:23 PM on April 8, 2006