Here's looking @ you, kid - The Evolution of Email

Image: Minal Shetty

The new Facebook Messages (launched on November 15) is the first major attempt to redefine electronic communication since Gmail. Facebook founder and chief, Mark Zuckerberg, was careful to say it was not an ‘email killer,’ and in fact that you didn’t even really need an @facebook.com email address to use it.  

But look closely, and you wonder whether it’s time to sing requiems for our email addresses.

Archives
The roots of email pre-date the Web, or even the Internet. In the 1960s, users of mainframe computers began leaving files in each other’s directories, much like how we leave sticky note on each other’s desks. Then, in 1969, the USA’s Department of Defence’s ARPANET set up nodes in several universities (which was the beginning of the Internet). Users were no longer a small number of people connected to one computer. This made it difficult to keep track of which message was for whom. Some form of addressing was needed. In 1972, Ray Tomlinson chose the ‘@’ symbol on the standard keyboard — until then used mainly by accountants — as a separator, thus: Person@computername.

By the end of the 1970s, more than 75 percent of ARPANET’s traffic was email. Over the years, many refinements made email progressively easier to use: Folders, offline storage, protocols like smtp and POP, newsgroups, attachments.

Then in 1990 Tim Berners-Lee, building on a number of existing technologies, invented the World Wide Web, and by ’92, the first Web sites were up. Around ’94, the first experimental Web mail services started. In 1996, Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Trout launched Hotmail, which caught the world’s fancy, and email really took off, spreading beyond scientists and academics. All one needed was a PC that had ’Net access; the spread of cybercafés helped not a little. Other providers, notably Yahoo, also began offering free Web mail. Inboxes were small, attachment sizes were limited too; but in those days, that didn’t matter much. Still, as the new century rolled in, and the Web moved beyond simple home pages with low-resolution graphics to being a repository of all kinds of media, those limits began to chafe.

But  the next big change took all of eight years to roll around.

G wiz!
In 2004, Google busted it all open with Gmail, a genuine reimagining of email, with ‘threaded’ conversations that kept relevant groups of email together, auto-refresh, so you didn’t have to keep clicking to see if you had new email, and a massive 1gb inbox, all supplemented with, naturally, very good search abilities, so you could find things in those now-massive inboxes. Plus those search smarts helped Gmail to provide much more efficient spam filters. Google has continued to refine the Gmail experience with a succession of innovative tweaks and add-ons since then but, it’s fair to say that none of them was as big an evolutionary leap.

New mail
Today, digital natives — those born since the Web era started — have become a force to reckon with. We older ones may have taken to new tech with joy and awe; these teens, tweens and kiddies, on the other hand, grew up knowing nothing else.

And they find email too — believe it or not — slow. Click ‘Compose,’ then write a subject line, then a salutation..? Who has the time? Digikids are used to instant messages:  one-to-one smses; one-to-network status message, one-to-the-universe microblog updates. They connect with short, snappy messages in abbreviated — to the point of incomprehensibility for fogies — text using a multitude of devices.

That’s what Facebook has been watching. And now, they’re stepping up to get a slice of that action. Messages is clearly aimed at the statusphere. It takes a leaf out of Gmail’s book, by threading messages exchanged between individuals, except that it threads the complete history of those exchanges, including private messages, chats, SMS and — if you take the optional @facebook.com email address — email. It dispenses with old school stuff like subject lines, and, obviously, there’s no need to start off each Message with fuddy-duddy things like ‘Dear X’ or even a ‘wassup!’ (In a small concession to the rest of the world, incoming non-@facebook email will have its subject line inserted in bold text.) And you partake of this merry mix using whatever tools you normally use for Facebook: Computer, handheld, phone, whatever.

What, then, of conventional email?

Getting the Message
Hotmail, in its current Windows Live avatar, is the world’s largest Web mail provider with over 360 million users; Yahoo mail has around 280 million; and Gmail comes in third at around 190 million. Facebook has a ready made user base, 500 million strong (roughly 1/14th the world’s population) and growing. Even if it manages to get only half its users to adopt Messages, it vaults straight into third place. If it converts a larger percentage — there’s no reason why not — it becomes that much more attractive to businesses. Facebook is already watching everything we do, not just on Facebook but elsewhere, with its ‘Like’ buttons spreading like locusts across the Web. Businesses happily pay juicy sums to be able to  target their ads well.

Worst case scenario? All us fossils stay away in droves, the way that many older people still can’t quite grok email or the Web in general. That’s not going to bother Facebook. They’re pulling in around $800 million, mainly from advertising, and are sitting on a $11.5 billion valuation. Imminent bankruptcy and frantic needs for monetisation aren’t exactly likely.

Facebook is investing in Gen Next. Those millions of always-on, texting, IMing, photo-posting, Like-clicking youngsters with shared online lives and very different notions of privacy from you or I are going to take to Messages like telecom ministers to PR agencies. They’ll move to the workplace soon enough, with their own disposable incomes. Facebook will still be there, offering them the platform for their kind of communication, probably with more bells and whistles.

What are the threats? Microsoft doesn’t really get user interface; I’m inclined to think Hotmail won’t get any better. (Though, I have to admit, their Windows Phone 7 OS has been getting very good reviews, so, like so many others, I could be underestimating the behemoth from Redmond and will have to eat my words.) Yahoo? A crumbling edifice. Apple? It wouldn’t surprise me, frankly, if I heard tomorrow that they are launching some insanely beautifully designed email killer; no one does user interface like Apple. And Google? It, too, takes its users, and user interface, seriously, and it has proven to be fairly nimble for its size. Notwithstanding their recent disastrous attempt to launch a revolutionary communication and collaboration tool — Google Wave, which I loved, but could get very few friends to adopt — Google’s army of PhDs can never by counted out.

One waits, one watches, one prepares to report on the revolution.

Probably via Twitter.