278 E-mails, and Nothing's On
September 18, 2003
Is e-mail dead? I tend to not think too much of e-mail in the context of content management, but I do have clients who are interested in at least managing e-mail archives. But, in truth, is it really worth saving?
As of 2:00 today, I had received 130 e-mails in my primary (business) e-mail account. 74 of them were successfully identified as spam and filtered into a separate Microsoft Outlook folder. Another eight were infected with a virus, and were trapped by my anti-virus software and deleted. Another dozen were bounces from AOL e-mail accounts that had been spammed by someone else using my email address. This leaves 36 legitimate business e-mails. I have a second business account that has excellent server-side spam filtering software. Every three days it sends me an e-mail showing me the (typically) scores of spam it has trapped on and quarantined. In the same period of time, I may have received 20 legitimate e-mails.
I'm tempted to ask, "What the hell is wrong with this picture?" but a more accurate question might be, "Does this work at all?"
I manage, through significant effort and expense on my part, to make email work for me and a small number of e-mail addresses that I manage for others. But the outcome of all of this effort is, at best, a handicapped medium. Before e-mail can be a useful part of enterprise content, it must first be, by and large, useful content. Right now it isn't.
Bill Trippe
btrippe@nmpub.com
Posted by Bill Trippe at September 18, 2003 3:59 PM
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I fear email is going to get worse before it gets better. A year ago, you could depend on an email to either arrive, or bounce. That is no longer the case, as ISPs and individuals are forced to install ever-stricter spam filtering (which often drops suspect emails without notice, including any false positives) and email systems are overwhelmed by the volume and start losing messages. Both my ISP and my mail-forwarding service have gone thorugh periods recently where emails have been lost, delayed for days or hours, or bounced 5 days later.
I, for one, no longer trust email.
I don't see much hope for this improving short of a major overhaul of the whole system, including some sort of authentication of senders and verification of receipt.
Posted by Boris Goldowsky at September 24, 2003 7:48 AM