Email--- Dead or Alive?

The topic doing around is whether Email is dead or will be dead in a couple of years. Life seems to have come to a full circle for the application that was the reason for the death of writing letters!!

Mark Zuckerberg, founder Facebook, recently mentioned that “email would fade out, just like the letter did, as it is slow and informal”. That added fuel to the discussion that Email is dead. In fact, many of his fans and followers seem to agree with his views on the topic.

• http://www.fbjs.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=165275610152788&topic=296
• http://www.mumbaimirror.com/index.aspx?page=article&sectid=7&contentid=2010111720101117023600482274049f8
• http://www.tribuneindia.com/2010/20101119/science.htm
• http://gigaom.com/2010/11/15/facebook-launches-all-in-one-social-inbox/

You cannot deny the fact that Instant messaging is becoming more popular, and email is definitely losing its earlier charm. But will it be completely dead? It is too early to comment on that or even comprehend it as of now. Some things that you use emails for, seems almost impossible with instant messaging!! But then who knows? Today’s technology becomes obsolete tomorrow faster than you can imagine or understand!!

I do and prefer a world where IMs and emails are integrated, and we know which one to use for different work. Hence, I like what Terry Zink wrote on his blog :

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tzink/archive/2010/11/22/the-death-of-email-hardly.aspx

But what’s your take on it? Is email dead or integration of Email and IM is the future?