The end may be near for email
Posted Jun 11, 2012 7:44 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Instant messaging, Facebook pokes and even friend requests could soon become the way of the future as some CEOs turn to social media and away from email.
Canada’s top bosses are predicting an eventual end to the old standard as they look for faster and more transparent alternatives.
A recent study found 16 per cent of Canadian chief executives have already turned to sites like Facebook and Skype to keep in touch with their customers.
Numbers show that’s expected to grow to 57 per cent in just three to five years.
Social media expert Tom Vassos says he’s not surprised by the growing number of people turning away from email.
He tells 660News many prefer the instantaneous and transparent aspects of social media compared to the old standard digital letter.
“Through social media you might get other people reading that information and sending it to other people so that the number of people that see that message is many times greater than a simple email,” says Vassos.
“It could be Twitter where people are able to send information to billions of people in short snippets,” he says. “Or Facebook where you can send it to a specific group of friends and communicate with it.”
CEO Thierry Breton of French marketing giant Atos has become one of the many turning away from the dated desktop tool.
Breton has put a ban on internal emails in his workplace and is vowing Atos will become email-free by the year 2014; a big task for the company’s 80,000 employees in 42 countries.
Vassos warns it’s still too early for top bosses to kill off email completely, adding its death will be slow.
“There’s still a purpose for it,” he says. “For direct one-to-one communications and one-to-many communications especially, but it is slowly being replaced by more instant communications.”
According to a recent study at the University of California, emails can also be hazardous to your health.
Researchers found many who check their work accounts regularly record higher levels of stress.
