SensoryMetrics

Honeywell had it right in this vintage magazine ad from 1981. Email: confounding blasts of out-of-control electrons. Sometimes it’s useful, most of the time it’s anatomically and/or financially incorrect.

Back in 2003, tech blogger Paul Soltoff wrote about his predictions for email. There’s a tendency when one predicts the future to focus on positive attributes, not detrimental ones. Instead, Paul talks about a looming crisis. He states that in 2003 25% of emails was spam. To overcome this, the industry needed to move towards permission-based messaging. This would allow email to thrive as well as benefit direct marketing. Ignoring the spam problem would eventually destroy email. Fast-forward to 2008, and spam now makes up 50% of worldwide emails. Dealing with spam still relies on ineffective filters. Permission-based messaging exists, but only in closed social networks like Facebook. Email as we know it is dying.

If you send Jobe or me an email via sensorymetrics, there’s a good chance we’ll miss it. Too much spam. Lately our comments section has also been overwhelmed by spam. If we miss your comment, sorry, just try again!

Paul also had a couple other predictions. He thought most email applications would be fully multi-media. Unfortunately, email hasn’t really changed much since 2003. Perhaps we can blame Outlook for the industry becoming rather complacent on this one.A third prediction: 66% of mobile devices will support email by 2006. I don’t have the stats to confirm it, but that number looks about right.

What’s the future hold for email post-2008? I’ll predict that more and more people will move to messaging networks where users are all authenticated. Networks that continue to support anonymity will go the way of the hotmail dodo.

Thoughts? Send us an email! lol

Tags: email, spam, future, facebook, permission-based-messaging, user-authentication