We are gradually moving towards instant messaging for our internal communications at Select Metrix and away from email. Speed is a big part of this move for us, but email spam is also driving the change. I have a difficult time imagining email disappearing all together, but this article from Inc.com provides some insight:
Due to increasing levels of spam, companies may soon have to look beyond e-mail as the primary method of communicating with employees and customers, according to a new study.
In 2007 alone, it is predicted that nearly 97 billion e-mails will be sent daily worldwide, 40 billion of which will be spam messages, the study found.
In a recent report forecasting worldwide e-mail usage over the next five years and published by Framingham, Mass.-based market-intelligence firm IDC, this is the first year that spam e-mail volumes are expected to exceed person-to-person e-mail volumes sent worldwide.
Unbelievable. We can attest that spam is a real problem for blogs too. Our comments section is inundated every day with hundreds of spam comments. We have to sift through them to find the real comments to approve (and I apologize for any legitimate comments that accidentally get deleted).