In The Next Version

Speaking specifically of Facebook and not a work construct, I find the messaging paradigm troublesome. Either I have to look at the bottom of the screen, which is a bit cumbersome because I'm logged in on more than one computer, and notice a past message or I just get another email anyhow. And the concept of instant messaging has essentially disappeared, but that means that every FB IM I get updates my message inbox, literally every time! It's very inelegant.

Hey Josh. What freaks me out is when I get notification via email, the native app on my iPad and the native app on my Android all at the same time! Of course deleting one does not delete the others, so basically I get notified 4 times when anything happens! Ah, social networking.

I really like this post, Alan. Finally someone of influence who tells people it's not wrong to use email. I personally still feel email is an essential part of the way I work, and really don't know how other social apps can replace it entirely. Yes, sometimes e.g. Twitter or Connections are better tools, but not always. I hate email-haters :-)

Theo, thank you for the "influencer" compliment. If you look back over the last 3-4 years since the "email hatred" thing started, I've always tried to be level headed and say "use the right tool for the right job." Is email misused? Of course it is, but that's because it's so easy to use and it's everywhere. I GUARANTEE we'll soon be (or already are) having similar discussions about the misuse and employee hatred of social networking tools. (as I wrote in my 2012 post)

Email is still the most effective and appropriate place to send someone information or requests that can be queued for response at a later time. There is no great need to replace this tool with an instant or more "socially connected" one.

I have a disturbing example of how this phenomenon has already impacted me. Last year a friend of my family's passed away, and the only discussion of her death amongst my family took place on Facebook. This occurred during a time when I was paying almost no attention to Facebook... a week later, still with no clue what had happened, I get an email from my sister telling me how insensitive I am for not yet conveying my condolences to the family. I've had very mixed feelings about the notion of social networks ever since.

The trick is to manage the interruption, regardless of the path it takes to reach you. Check out this article: { Link }

This topic is SO important, and "for some reason" it's not a topic easy to discuss with software vendors.

I very much agree with most of your points, Alan.

First of all ... I dislike the notion of e-mail being "misused", even though I agree, that the way e-mail is being used is not necessarily optimal from an enterprise perspective. But from the individual users perspective, e-mail tools solve a hell of a lot of business challenges, that very often aren't being addressed properly by the enterprise, such as archiving, search, retrieve and retention issues.

When such issues aren't addressed on an enterprise-wide scale, individual users are forced to seek out solutions on their own, and they will choose the tool available, that fits their processes the best - very often the enterprise e-mail platform. "Misuse" from the enterprise perspective, but brilliant use from the user perspective. But it is always easier to sell companies on new, exciting technology, than to sell them on expanding and optimization of already established platforms of an older date.

In my opinion, social tools aren't the solution to e-mail woes. It may bring some relief (for a while), but introduces many of the same challenges at the same time, as well as new challenges.

One challenge is the "signal to noise ratio". As Tim's example (@6) shows, there is a very real risk of missing information on the social stream, simply because it floods, and if every update on the social stream uses e-mail notification, well then e-mail is flooding too, just adding to the noise ratio.

In the end, it comes back to control and governance; two elements not that "native" in the world of "social". Can you as an enterprise manager accept, that the social "work" stream is flooded by "personal" information? If no, then "public" social tools like Facebook, Google+ and Twitter aren't acceptable for "inside-the-enterprise" use.

Enter the social tools for the enterprise; Jive, Socialtext, IBM Connections etc.

And enter "yet another" (or several) channel(s) to monitor. Enter e-mail notifications and e-mail flooding, or content aggregators and bad "signal to noise" ratios.

So even if the enterprise adopts social, not just from a technical perspective, but also as a radical change in work culture, it is very likely that they still need to "fix" their e-mail woes, and there's a good chance the solutions to e-mail's "problems" will prepare you well for similar challenges on the social platforms.

Don't worry Lars, analytics and intelligent filtering are going to solve all the information overload problems with streams. ;-)

Ah! But then you alienate the "people" from the social communication and it is back to "feeds" instead of "relations". Will that have the same value, and will people engage? :-)

In my current role, I train sellers to adopt social networking tools - inside and outside of IBM - to monitor conversations, stay informed, and expand their networks. They are so overwhelmed by all the different "feeds" and "activity streams" and crave a way to aggregate the feeds, and have some kind of "social intelligence" that filters out the relevant items for them. There's an idea for a startup in 2012 to take on, so you'll have something interesting to write about :)

Thanks for verbalizing something that many of us see and understand. It's folly to argue that the technology is the problem; technology is ALWAYS the problem. For years people have argued about the misuse of "reply to all" and while I certainly get annoyed when messages fill my inbox, it's one of the features of email which promote transparency and inclusion. Said differently, it can be as hard to read all the comments on a blog or a forum post, as it can be to sort through all the replies to all.

I like the social mail demos that IBM showed today at Lotusphere. Sure, I'm an IBMer, but I'm also a user. I think the product teams are seeing this the right way and are introducing social mail concepts such that will support the embrace of social, while recognizing how much email, and messaging service built on email, is still a part of the fabric that makes business happen.