Software that requires people to explicitly declare the formation of these groups, and to acknowledge their dissolution, is too blunt an instrument for such ephemeral social interaction. Like an operating-system thread, an e-mail thread is a lightweight construct, cheap to set up and tear down. Could a protocol other than SMTP, and an application other than e-mail, support such interaction? Sure, but any other communication medium that has e-mail's special power to convene groups will suffer the same diseases that afflict e-mail: spam, abuse, infoglut. [Full story at InfoWorld.com]
When I recently threw some cold water on the notion that RSS is ready to displace email, I failed to articulate what, exactly, is so special about email. This column makes the case. … [Jon's Radio]