[roberttod]

I just went through my Inbox to figure out why I still use email.

For personal stuff, I think WhatsApp, Messenger, iMessages are clear winners. 90% of my emails seem to be marketing I'll never read or notifications I ignore. I try my best to unsubscribe, but email really needs maintenance to work nicely.

For work almost everything is Slack. Sales team and a few others still seem to use email for some reason. Email is vital for communication with clients and it's pretty good for a big announcement where you can then choose to "reply all" or "reply", not sure Slack solves that nicely with threads. Also email seems to be used for anything considered too important for Slack, but I can't see any good reason why it should be that way.

When you boil it all down, it looks like a lot of use of email is for legacy reasons, i.e. some people still insist on using it. There is legitimate usefulness over other options when it comes to communicating between companies though. Even if Slack figured out a way to fix that, they'd probably require the reciever to be paying for Slack.

I guess the ability to send a stranger a message is email's weakness and it's strength. Nothing out there has solved that yet.

[leetcrew]

an email address and a phone number are still the only things you can safely assume everyone has. for many of my older relatives and non-tech acquaintances, the only options are email, sms, or phone calls.

i dislike phone calls in general for all but the most time-sensitive and/or intimate conversations. i get a bit anxious on the phone and i don't like being essentially blocked for the duration of the call.

i dislike sms because i don't have an iphone, so i cannot respond using a full sized keyboard without using workarounds like pushbullet, which i don't feel like setting up for the small number of people who insist on using sms.

i don't love communicating via email but i would contest the claim that it is a legacy technology on the basis that it does not have a clear successor.

there is no modern service that matches the ubiquity of email; the penetration is unequaled even by the likes of facebook. i would also point out that (personal) email addresses provide highly stable means of communicating with infrequent contacts. while people's phone numbers change over time, people seem to accumulate personal email addresses and at least forward the old ones to their main account. if i got someone's personal email address five or even ten years ago, i have a pretty good chance of reaching them today. on the other hand, i assume that phone numbers that i haven't used for a couple years are dead links. with messaging apps, you don't always have a clear indication of whether the person currently has the app installed with notifications enabled.