The End of the Email Era (has been greatly exaggerated)

There's an interesting commentary in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Why Email No Longer Rules...And what that means for the way we communicate". While the author clearly researched her piece, I disagree with her conclusions. Consider the following:

• A survey report that we just published (available at no charge on our Web site) shows that 45% of individuals in the workplace report that their email use is greater now than it was a year ago.
• While 82% of users check their work-related email from home on weekdays (and 100% do so from work) only 28% use Twitter at work.
• More people check their work-related email on weekends and while on vacation than check social networking tools.

Further, it's important to understand that email is not really competitive with instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook or other tools -- for the most part, these tools are complementary. For example, if it's 3:00am and I need to send a file to someone, I will have little expectation that the recipient will be available via IM, and I can't send them a file on Twitter, but I can send them an email knowing they'll receive it in the morning. If it's 10:00am and I need a quick answer to a question, I can IM someone whose presence status I can see. If I want to follow the comments and news pointers from people whose opinion I consider valuable I will use Twitter. If I need to collaborate on a project via a shared workspace, I will use any of the growing number of tools built for that purpose.

In short, email, IM, social networking, collaboration and other tools are part of an array of communications choices that people use in ways that, for the most part, are additive rather than replacements for one another.