[hyperbovine]

  I don't think that email is going away for a while because its entrenched into people's habits and it provides control.

That, and people don't seem to dislike it. Seriously, no one I know is frustrated with e-mail as a medium for communication. (Spam used to be a problem, but that was only because it got in the way of sending and receiving e-mail.)

E-mail is one of the greatest technological innovations of all time--can you think of another gadget used by a six-year old, a 106-year old, and everyone in between? Even the web doesn't quite qualify. The snail mail metaphor works, and people like it. As Wave demonstrated, the 99% of non-edge cases (none of whom work at Google) are not pining for increased levels of interaction, organization or complication when it comes to messaging. Mark Zuckerberg's criticism of e-mail, that it is too formal (or whatever), sounds like a guy with a hammer in search of a nail.

But then again, what do I know? As a non-Facebook user, I'm not exactly in the majority, and FB has proved me wrong on these issues time and again :-)