So I finally sat down the other day and did an inventory of my email. I set up every filter, every folder, every sub-folder to file away messages into neat categories. I came to a startling realization:
I really don’t get a whole lot of email.
I mean, I get over a hundred messages a day. But once I’ve filtered out the spam, the mailing lists, the advertising (much of it opt-in, I’m ashamed to say, and I’m not going to opt out because I like reading ads about cool audio hardware and stuff), and whatnot…
I’m down to about 1-5 emails a day.
That’s kind of pathetic, really. I read dozens of emails a day (skipping about a hundred or so), and only a couple are actually addressed to me. I did a similar thing with my work mail, and found that I only ever received personally-addressed mail when I sent some for one reason or another.
How much of your mail is really yours?
Same boat – no oars, though
My work e-mail is littered with tons of Google Alerts and newsletters of all types, and way-too-many news releases, but I just did a count of yesterday’s e-mail addressed to me, which actually required specific action from me, and the grand total was 8 – over two days!
In the grand scheme of things, though, I’ve begun to wonder how much longer e-mail newsletters and the like are going to survive. Blogs, RSS readers and whatever else is going to quickly supplant the listserv or older bulletin board systems. I’d much rather click on an RSS feed than scroll down through a long digest from a listserv, and I’d rather read these blog posts to stay in touch with folks than try to keep up with the e-mail, too.
I wonder how much kids these days – talking about tweeners and the like – are using listservs as opposed to LiveJournal or some other blog.
I’d say at least 90% of the
I’d say at least 90% of the mail that I get is personally addressed to yours truly. But a) I use gmail, which has some tremendous spam filtering capability, and b) I’m very careful about giving my address out over the web. I must have like 4 seperate addresses I use for sign-ups and registrations, so my main address doesnt get on that many lists.
No newsgroups, either. I got my Daily Show and I got my Barnson.org… if it’s not talked about there, it’s not really worth talking about, is it?
I’m 60%
Over my four email accounts, 60% of email is personal email, written for personal communication purposes with me as either the single recipient or one of many recipients.
Tim, can you explain how to benefit from RSS? I’d like to learn. Thanks!
I’ve never used listservs before but apparently it’s now the best way to traffic in illicit, copyright-protected media files…
RSS is the future?
I used to subscribe to dozens of ‘pushed’ newsletters from all kinds of sites – mostly boring health-policy related news releases, etc.
With the advent of RSS, most of those same sites are replacing their old e-mail newsletters with RSS feeds. Since Google launched their customizable homepage (Yahoo has it’s My Yahoo!) and allowed you to paste RSS feeds, I’ve adjusted my routine, unsubscribing from e-mail newsletters and diverting my attention to the RSS feeds.
We’re about to do RSS feeds for my news releases here at work (we being, me asking the web guy to set it up, him doing the work, me taking advantage of that work). For a while, I am sure, I’ll be staying with blast e-mails. But since I am hearing from reporters and freelancers that they are making this same move to RSS – anything to unclutter an in-box, which is the bane of every reporter’s life – I’ve got to adjust my practices to suit.
It’s got to be gradual. Newsgroups and listservs are one of the fundamental ways early adopters got onto the Internet. Anyone else still frequent old Usenet newsgroups in their new home on Google? But the day isn’t that far off where you’ll open up your portal and your feeds will bring you what you want, when you want it.
It’s funny though how practices change. I used to spend an inordinate amount of time using various sources to monitor for relevant news about whatever organization I was working for, or issue that is at the top of the agenda. With blog aggregators and better search tools, followed by RSS feeds for customized search results, I spend less time doing point-and-click hunting and more time using the results in real time.
New Study shows 85-90%
We didn’t really need a study to confirm what we already know, but a Commtouch report released this week stated that “85%-90% of all global e-mail is spam. In addition, more than 60 percent of spam-sending bots also send malware…there are more than 300,000 zombie computers, personal computers infected with spam sending malware, become newly activated each day.”