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April 3, 2008
In Defense of Email
Over at Gizmodo, I came across this entry musing about the pervasiveness of text messaging (apparently not written by a European):"...I began to wonder about the phenomenon of text messaging as a whole. Sometimes it seems that it would make more sense to call or send an email, but that crap is for old people."
Perhaps I'm mistaken in believing the merits of email should be obvious and that nobody can honestly believe that texting is superior for all, or even most, occasions. So, I thought I'd put together a brief table outlining what I consider the advantages of each technology:
Near-instantaneous delivery |
Delivery can be delayed |
A clear advantage for texting | |
Included in all phones |
Increasingly common |
Not as much of a difference as even a year ago | |
| Good mobile email clients are no harder to use than most Texting interfaces | |||
160-character limit |
What can't email do? |
Attachments, long messages, and rich text are all things email does easily but that texting doesn't do well, if at all | |
no long-term storage |
email archives are forever |
Some messages you don't care about referencing in the future, but can you be sure when you send it that you won't care? | |
$0.10+ apiece when not bought in bulk |
Free with any Internet service |
Some may find this contentious, but I pay extra for texting on my cellular account whereas email is just part of my overall Internet connectivity fee |
I think the biggest drawback I see to texting is the whole temporal retention issue. I rely extensively on my ability to search through my emails, both professional and personal, sometimes going back years to look up something. In contrast, I don't know anyone who saves their text messages for even more than a few months. I asked a classful of college seniors how long they kept text messages on their phones. Less than 10% keep them longer than a week!
Do I txt? Yep, everyday, but I still use email a lot more. I'm not going to pull the "age = wisdom" card and claim that "old people" (per the Gizmodo story) use email more because they're wiser (I'm not even sure I'd be considered "old"), but my perception is that email offers a lot of advantages that texting just can't match right now.
Posted by Craig in Computing
and Internet
and Mobile & PDAs
and Phones
and Society / Politics
and Technology
Comments
There are other factors here that I consider equally important. One is the timeliness of the expected response--maybe I'm too polite, but a lot of my messages aren't important enough to interrupt people during their day. Another is whether you save (archive) them -- what was the name of that cool band that Craig mentioned last month? Lastly, there is some classic aesthetic inherent with each communication media; I don't care how new-school you are--proposing marriage over IM is plain wrong.
A phone call has a couple expected response times: it is expected to be picked up immediately or it becomes a voicemail with a longer response time (I'm a busy guy, but if I haven't called you back by two weeks you can assume you've been forgotten.) People don't usually archive voicemail. A phone call is also more personal--I wouldn't, for example, tell a friend that your spouse is pregnant over IM... unless you're trying to be absurd.
A text message, if not replied to in an hour or so becomes forgotten by both parties. People don't usually save text messages long term. It's also more insistent than email. People tick me off by interrupting me with text messages on things that are pretty unimportant.
IMs can sit on people's (I'm away) desktop or smart-phone for a half day or more before being viewed or seen. Some people archive and search old IMs.
Emails can be replied to instantly, or they can sit around for a couple weeks. Like IMs, people often archive emails and search them later.
Posted by: Bob at April 7, 2008 9:48 AM