Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 7:04 pm
The moment I saw this article, my response I was writing in my head was "entrusting your privacy to a guy who runs on the ideals that you have none is a bad idea." Since reading the article, and seeing it only mentioned some paradigms to be brought over from social media, I find myself more on the fence but leaning towards the more traditional email concept.
I know more than a few people who get a lot of email from their accounts. I once spoke to a person in research who told me they got over 500 emails when they went on vacation for a few days, and another in the oil industry who, over the course of a week, managed over 300 while he was away on vacation, with everyone in both cases being advised of their departure and estimated time of return.
However, much of the email they get is from other employees or their employer, who utilizes the system rather than specific orders to get information to as many people as possible. I have a feeling that should such a system being implemented, the mass majority of emails received would still be getting received as a result, whether by choice or by employers providing the accounts only allowing limited blocking and such -- at least, when it comes to the place who hosts my email, that generally is how it is. Indeed, depending on what they include, I'd not be surprised to see their productivity decrease. There's a few executive level FB-like sites out there for more professional use which still eats up quite a few people's time.
For the time being, the best way to handle email, in my opinion anyways, is strict knowledge of who has your work email and prompt use of spam or auto-sort filters a lot of email programs have now to make sure priorities are handled and lesser priorities or new messages are set aside for future perusal should time be available. That's just me, though.