The following question came up at the Web Conference this week (in my session on Blogs & Wikis for Internal Communications and when I was in Mark Greenfield's tutorial on The Long Tail of Social Networks). Since then I've been dying to ask other people what their opinions are on the matter:
Is the listserv dead yet?
Here are some related thoughts/questions...
- In what cases (or for what UP listservs) would Ning be a good substitute?
- What about using Twitter to get immediate answers to questions we used to clutter others inboxes with via listserv?
- What other solutions/technologies do you see helping us kill off the listserv?
- What is our listserv exit plan to get people to move from listservs to adopting new technologies?
Okay, Nikki. I've responded to the extent that I wound up moving it to my blog because it was too damned long. I did trackback, so if you have that active, it should show up. If not, here's the link... http://www.personal.psu.edu/rvs2/blogs/renegade/2008/06/listservs-and-blogs-and-wikis.html
As always, YMMV.
The ultimate problem, as I see it, is that email is an old shoe. Its comfortable, and so despite the fact that it is not meant for most of the different kinds of communication that people use it for today, it does get the job done. People like you and I understand that there are much more effective, much more appropriate avenues by which to collaborate and discuss ideas. But to the average person, if it aint broke, dont fix it. Thats difficulty number 1.
Difficulty number 2 is that I don't think we'll ever be able to change the standard until we see those "small pieces" join a little less loosely. Most of us who live in this circle are a part of the small minority of fringe early adopters, and either because of a professional need or a personal passion, we are willing to put up with inconveniences. Like having accounts with 40 different web 2.0 services, and the need to engage in 20 different places at a time. Inconveniences for us. But for a vast majority of people, its a death knell. It makes the barriers for entry far too high - the learning curve too steep.
When the conversation becomes more about OpenID, Open Social, and services like Friend Feed, which provide a simplifying, consolidating influence, then we'll be moving in the right direction. But remember what you are up against. Depending on your perspective, email has been around since the 60s or 70s. Ning is what, 3 years old? Twitter is 2. We see the value in the tools, but we're also willing to move onto something new if they fail or are replaced. Most people are not. Thats difficulty number 3. The tools need to prove their staying power before people will be willing to hop aboard.
I'd love to see the day when email is deprecated or at least sees its role reduced. But knowing how difficult it has been for me to push concepts like RSS on people, I think we have a long way to go before we're ready to kiss email goodbye, at least on a large scale.