Is the answer to broken email yet another email system? Thoughts on Yahoo acquiring Zimbra

Zimbra was acquired yesterday for $350 million by Yahoo! That's great news for the pockets of its staff and investors, but what about the rest of us? There is a constant stream of talk about email bankruptcy, email overload, and email being broken ... and if that's all true, does yet another email system solve the problem? Does switching from Outlook, Notes, Gmail, Hotmail or any other system resolve our serious issues with email?

No, it doesn't. Marc Orchant's essay in More Space entitled "Work is Broken" addresses a way of being effective with email, pretty much regardless of email system. Mark Hurst in "Bit Literacy" (see Amazon, it's a book) talks about how to be effective using email, again pretty much regardless of what system you use -- although note that he's generally disgusted with the poor state of email clients and their lack of bit literacy. And David Allen, GTD guru and coach, would pretty much say the same thing -- it's in how you use what you've got, not really what you've got (to the chagrin of many, David is a big Lotus Notes fan).

And what about the case studies from collaboration vendors -- Traction Software, Socialtext and Atlassian -- to name but three, pointing to the huge reduction in enail traffic that's possible with alternative communication and collaboration tools? Are they fake numbers? Do senior execs not believe them or not "get it"? Surely if a businessperson overloaded by email wanted to make a game-changing move they'd switch to something with profound options for improvement; otherwise the answer to "email is broken" is merely "get a different email".

So while I'm delighted for Satish et al at Zimbra, I'm disappointed for the market and for businesses that the $350 million didn't go to something that had more of a potential breakthrough impact. Now if Yahoo had paid $350 million for Traction, or Atlassian, or Socialtext ... Then I'd take my hat off to them as business visionaries.

Apart from some money changing hands, I fail to see much of an impact from this move. Was it driven by vision or desperation? What's your view?

(Blogging from BlackBerry; hence no links)

Comments

[John Dickson]

It's gratifying to know that at least a few out there see how inefficient e-mail has become. Unfortunately, even in the government IT shop where I work, hardly anyone "gets it". I'm having modest success promoting "conversations in context" using eRoom. Some of our e-mail inboxes now contain links to well organized conversation threads that are easy to read. If I have my way, Atlassian will soon be added to our tool chest.

Approaches like 9cays and QuickTopic may eventually land behind enterprise firewalls. Participation in well organized, easy to read conversations could be done without leaving the comfort of the e-mail client.

[Marc Orchant]

Great observations Michael and thanks for mentioning the More Space essay I wrote. If your readers want to read it, listen to it, or download it - it's available free here:

http://www.astroprojects.com/morespace/marc/