[Infowarrior] - Whatever happened to the email app?

[Richard Forno]

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/08/the_great_email_client_mystery/

Whatever happened to the email app?
Andrew Orlowski (andrew.orlowski at theregister.co.uk)

Posted in Applications, 8th March 2010 12:33 GMT

Lab Notes Is the email program dead? Did the whole world just migrate  
away from Hotmail over to Facebook when we weren't looking? Does  
anyone else care?

Weirdly, the answer seems to be yes, yes, and no. Email has never gone  
away, and its advantages are unique: but the email client seems to be  
going the way of the Gopher.

Which is a bit odd when you consider how useful it still is. Nobody  
knows your email address unless you tell them, and messages are  
private by default. These are still the internet's universal protocols  
for private communication, something Web 2.0 types only grudgingly  
admit exists.

We have to be honest - managing your own POP3 or IMAP accounts always  
was a bit of a minority pastime. Notes and Outlook ruled the roost on  
corporate PCs. Most of the rest of the world - normal people - only  
ever used a webmail service as a primary email account.

Facebook offers them a pretty straightforward upgrade - with the  
illusion of privacy, no spam, and a pretty easy to use address book.  
Just don't tell Facebook investors that one day it might be as  
profitable as Hotmail... But for me and many of you I suspect, the   
choice of email client is something in which you make a bit of  
investment, and a careful decision.

And what a sorry landscape we have before us.

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