Email is broken (and my embarrassment)

I thought I would connect together two things that are in the news this week:

• Symantec highlight that SPAM has fallen to 70% of all emails.
• Atos boss Thierry Breton feels the need to defend his internal email ban.

I’m not going to give much more comment than to point out that if in any other arena 70% of something was clear rubbish (and much of the other 30% was less than valuable) we would be up in arms.

• If 70% of the music I listened to was hiss – I wouldn’t listen.
• If 70% of the TV that I watched was white blur – I wouldn’t watch.
• If 70% of the post coming through my door went straight in the bin – I would ask the post office to stop delivering.
• If 70% of all of the words in all of the documents I read where rubbish – I’d throw the document back to the author (something I do have to do from time to time).

And that’s not even accounting for all of the inappropriate use of email.

This is the point where I have to admit to a classic email mistake last week which, to a certain extent, just demonstrates the brokenness of email.

We run relaxation days at work where someone comes into the building, takes over a meeting room, and provides massage and other relaxation services. We get invited to these events via email.

For some reason I clicked on reply-to-all rather than just reply.

This resulted in me sending an email to the whole of the building, several hundred people, with the immortal words:

"have you got any slots left for back, neck and shoulder massage?"

You can imagine my embarrassment.

I’m with Thierry, let’s find better ways of communicating.