We were just reading this http://slate.com/id/2177969/pagenum/all/#page_start and were wondering about the predicted doom of email as social-networking, texting and IM takes over from traditional email communications for many people. Scary stuff, will there even be another version of Exchange?
Of course there will, but my take on the above is this... It’s not a real threat to hosters of business services in our professional lifetimes, or even in the short to mid-term.
On a personal and social level we have been texting and using mobiles for nearly 15 years now (I had my first 'analog' mobile at Uni in '94) and SMS has boomed beyond any initial expectations, but that’s had little impact to the business world (Cobweb are a business email provider, not a multi-million mailbox consumer ISP)
Alternative forms of communication only seem to serve as an increase for information and communications. It’s healthly competition and serves to promote the medium and individuals seem to thrive for more information and contact on a 24/7 basis now.
What this really is, is an opportunity to pull all forms of communications together, and allow your message to reach it’s destination regardless of the medium or location of the recipient. If my status is set as "business contactable", whether I’m at home, emmersed in online gaming, in the car or on the phone – you should be able to deliver a message to me via my preferred medium of choice, be that IM, mobile, home, car, SMS, hotmail, voicemail, audio, fax?, written, visual notification, etc. That would be really clever!
Combine these solutions for business, business groups, personal, home and family communications and you’ll be singing! BTW, having a status of "do not disturb" or "authorised escalations only" would be required for me to buy into any service like this...
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