Lifehacker surveyed their readers, and a majority said that they prefer web-based email and use it more than desktop clients. 54% of approximately 11,000 responders said they only use applications like Gmail, YMail, and other (Insert Letter Here)Mail services; another 20% said they use both.
What does this mean? It means that people love free things, like 132 GB free email accounts, and will trade any personal information for it with no consideration of what they may be doing. By “free”, I mean that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft now owns, tracks, and documents a majority of electronic mail those 74% of people create and send, along with their personal information and much more.
Think about that- some intern at Google can see every piece of inappropriate email that you are sending your friends at work and at what time, and tie it to your searches, your web analytics, your Picasa photos of your mom, and then use Translate to turn it into Cyrillic for Russian pron hackers to use. Inevitably, someone will get upset and start complaining about the AdWords links that are popping up in their Gmail window (again) because apparently free email is a right, not a Web 2.0 service put forth by publically traded companies with shareholders (this goes back to my spam discussion in my previous post).
We’re about 8 months away from HAL- a robot that knows everything about me, from knowing all of my friends, to my weird search preferences, to what I did last week. Hell, if you use the desktop search apps and Google Apps, and then get an Android phone, Google will know absolutely everything about me. If we get lucky, this Slurp/Googlebot/MSNBot robot (I’ll throw the search junkies a bone) will be a cross of Dr. Manhattan, Data from Star Trek, and Johnny 5 from Short Circuit *. Ridiculous power, but cute and lovable and won’t hold its artificial intelligence over me in a demeaning way, even though it has a laser bazooka on its shoulder. I’m a delicate flower that couldn’t handle that kind of judgement and scrutiny.
That is why I am cutting myself off from all email and Google, even though I work in email marketing. This inevitable Don’t Be Evil but Actually is Evil robot won’t know anything about me**. From now on, I will be sending all correspondence via telegram, analog phone, my beeper, and horse-drawn carriage delivered snail mail. I’m going to disappear, like Jason Bourne or like Michael Jackson did between Dangerous and his pedophile trial.
(This may be too soon, but did everyone just forget about that trial? The man showed up in court, where he was being tried for allegedly fondled little boys, in pajama pants. Yes, he made Thriller, but he also made 2001’s Invincible. The man lived off of the success of 2 albums and his childhood success. There, I said it)
But the point of this blog entry is email, not to be a harbinger of doom and paranoia. For email marketers, if these numbers hold up and aren’t just representative Lifehacker.com’s dork readers (of which I am one) but the population as a whole, then that means that soon, B2C companies may not have to worry about designing for Outlook anymore, which sucks to design for because it reads code like a blind, illiterate monkey. Hooray!
Wait- If anybody should be worried, it should be the email industry, because if everyone is using webclients for email, we can no longer hold the “We know how to code for Gmail AND Outlook” argument over real web designers’ heads (which is why they should stop complaining about crappy Outlook 2007 and the forthcoming 2010. That’s right ESP- I’m calling you out). I love not having email standards. If we had standards, that would mean we, as a profession, would have to show actual value instead of just using buzz phrases and writing blogs about respect and opt-ins. We, the email marketing industry, shouldn’t have fixoutlook.org. No! We should have Thank-You-Microsoft-and-Google-for-your-crappy-email-clients.tv for giving us job security.
Google Trends
This is what Slurp/Googlebot/MSNBot evil robot would know about us today: In Today’s Hot Trends on Google Trends, the #1 trend is “obama joker poster” and the #3 trend in the USA searches is “Tiger Woods fart” (which has been removed from YouTube by the PGA). #4 is Rob Newbiggin, a professional boxer who is getting a sex change, but still boxing as Mercedes, a female boxer. Awesome. He will be one attractive woman.
* Whatever happened to Steve Guttenberg? He seemed like he was on the Soul Train to stardom in mid-80s, with Police Academy 1-20, the aforementioned Short Circuit, Cocoon, the venerable 3 Men and a Baby and its unmatched sequel 3 Men and a Little Lady, and then – BOOM – gone. That is what happens when you pigeonhole yourself, I guess. Working as an email manager can be pigeonholing; email could be thought of as the Steve Guttenberg of Internet Marketing. (back to where you were)
** I think that, soon, if you don’t show up in Google results, you’ll be deemed an outcast by society for your lack of popularity or considered a terrorist that is trying to hide something. Seriously. (back to where you were)
Technorati Tags: 3 men and a baby, 3 men and a little lady, Cocoon, Gmail, googlebot, msn, pedofile, Short Circuit, slurp, Tiger Woods fart
