It’s been 42 years since Ray Tomlinson, the founder of Internet-based email sent himself an email for the first time. Back in the day email used to be the only way for people to send long-distant messages. But, today things have changed. Instead of email, now we have Facebook and Skype to stay in touch with people.
After reading a ridiculous article somewhere on the Internet (I don’t remember the source) about how Email is dying and nobody’s using it, I started to think if we really need email in our lives. And, you know what? I think we still do.
In some ways we are starting to overgrow email. For example, nobody’s using email these days to subscribe to websites because we have Feedly and we don’t use it to share pictures with friends or to chat with them anymore because we are all on Facebook. But, that doesn’t mean email is useless. We still need it, and here’s why.
Sending Documents
What do you do when you have to send a valuable document, like a certificate or a special report? Do you send it via Facebook or Twitter? I don’t think so. Well, I guess you could upload your file to a cloud storage like Dropbox and share the link on Facebook, but that’s an awful lot of trouble to go through and it’s not even safe because Facebook owns everything you share and do inside the network. That’s where email comes up. It’s the perfect and safest way for sending documents and valuable files to someone you know, without having to worry about privacy breach.
Contacting Professionals
I have two email accounts. One for my personal use and other for this website related stuff. I check these accounts twice a day because I constantly get emails from other professionals like bloggers and other representatives who are trying to contact me. So, why do they use email to contact me? I have mentioned my Facebook, Twitter and Google+ on the website so, why not use one of those social networks to contact me? Because it’s not professional. If you want to formally contact someone professional, then email is the way. You don’t go check on their Facebook photos and Tweets before you send a message asking to collaborate on a professional deal. For years it stayed the same way and it always will be, at least until someone find a way to make hologram mails. Then I’m totally switching over to that.
Applying for a Job
Email is the only method that major companies use to accept job applications. And it’s the only way to send your CV as a formal letter. And, yes I know some people use networks like LinkedIn to find jobs and use their profiles as CV. But, when contacting a company outside a network like LinkedIn, how do you send your link to your LinkedIn profile to that company? Also, let me know if you can find a job posting that asks applicants to send a CV via Facebook or Twitter.
Registering on Websites
While we can register for most of the social networks and websites these days using nothing but our Facebook or Twitter account, we still need an email to register for those main social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and even for important websites like PayPal and many others. So, what are you gonna do if you doesn’t have an email account?
Email Notifications
Let’s say you bought something on eBay. Suddenly, something about that order changes, like its’ shipping date? And, I know for a fact that buyers don’t login to eBay everyday to check on their orders. So, how are you going to know about it right away? Well, this won’t be a problem if you still use email because when you have email notifications active for websites like eBay, you get immediate notification email whenever something happens on your account. Almost all the other important websites, even Facebook and Twitter uses email to send special messages to its’ users. Which means, you can’t get rid of email yet.
So, there you go. These are the five most basic uses of email. Now, try an tell me email is useless.
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Follow @nrjperera - Roshan Jerad Perera
