I still remember getting my first email id on Hotmail 10 years ago. It was a great feeling, having your own space on web. Suddenly the world was looking much smaller. I was able to stay in touch with my friends and relatives across the globe at virtually zero cost.
And then a time came when people started flaunting their email id on all possible domains and there were few lucky ones who could get their names@domain.com. But those who could not, ended up in name_yearofbirth/age@domain.com. I still feel pride owner of satyajeet.singh@gmail.com :-)
And then came Chat, Yahoo Groups, Social Networking Sites, Blogs and what not. Cheaper mobile prices and tariff have also played a major role in making emails less popular.
Emails are still trying to find a way out for its survival. Those who were planning to charge money for email space have started giving unlimited space for free. Because of stringent spam laws and increasing awareness, the revenue models of these companies are going for a ride. They are not able to create differentiation and the result of which, usability of emails is going down consistently. Chat, SMS, Scraps, Blogs are eating up the making share.
Late entrants like Zapak mail and AOL will face tough time in luring registrations. I don't even remember writing a personal email in last few months and what I receive is mostly chain mails, forwards, mailer, alerts etc. The only thing which makes me maintain my email id is that it has become a compulsion for registering on most websites.
Let’s wait to see how long they can survive without being killed by newer technology. I say 2-3 years.
July 2, 2007
Death of Emails
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I agree with you... I dont remember writing a personal email since a long time... considering that at one point of time, around the yr 2k, I has almost 10 email IDs on various sites - rediff, hotmail, yahoo, usa.net, sify, indiatimes... to name a few. and if you didn't notice, I havent even mentioned gmail in this list :) And now, I'm left using only gmail & yahoo.... Aol is still in a learning phase, though I did create an email ID there ( Old habits die hard ) n was successful in getting a firstname.lastname@aol.in ( Damn the corporate culture )...
I guess social networking sites..Orkut primarily ( thumbs up to Google ), has reduced the email usage to a great extent... ppl are happy writing scraps to each other even when all this info can be read by anybody on orkut...unless you've been smart enuf to keep ur scrapbook clean of personal info ...
Also, of all the existing email ids one may have, the official one is most widely used...for personal communication as well as useless forwards.... consuming a major part of the company bandwidth !!!!
I think this is an intersting concept you can pick for your next blog update ... what say Satyajeet ????
Post a Comment