David Baker wrote a very good article in the Sunday edition of Email Insider. I thought the information in it was very insightful and worth posting here.
EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE you come across a great article that just spurs your intellectual juices. One such article was written by Paul Gillin in BtoB magazine’s print edition last month, titled “New Technology, New Media and New Paradigm.” If you have not read it, I highly recommend you do.
We read a lot about strategy, issues, trends and client work, but rarely do we see anything written about the future of e-mail and its dependence on the rest of the digital world. I don’t have time to wait for the analysts to make their predictions. I need a far-reaching vision of how this channel fits into our business and consumer lives now and in the future.
So follow this logic and let me know what you think. A couple of passages from Paul Gillin’s article rang particularly true, not least for the sheer simplicity of how he laid out his thesis. He said:
“We hear a lot about blogs, but blogs aren’t important. What’s important is personal publishing, or the ability to communicate a message to a global audience almost instantaneously. Personal publishing will permeate electronic media, providing counterpoint to mainstream sources and adding depth and color to the conversation.
“We hear a lot about podcasts, but podcasts aren’t important. What’s important is time-shifted media. The phenomenon that started with TiVo has spread to digital audio and will soon capture portable video. Information consumers will no longer be beholden to program schedules or even their living rooms. Our TV shows will travel with us.
“We hear a lot about RSS, but RSS isn’t important. What’s important is the ability to subscribe to information that really interests us. RSS is mainly used to subscribe to blog posts and podcasts. But in the future, they will use it to subscribe to ideas.”
So, as someone who aspires to effect a change in the paradigm of digital communications and consumer behavior, I put my spin on the future of e-mail using this same logic. I conclude that we hear a lot about e-mail, but e-mail isn’t important. What’s important is our ability to communicate in a synchronous and asynchronous fashion in a mixed media world. E-mail will be our notification agent, alarm clock, Post-it