One of the mysteries I've always had was knowing exactly what e-mail is and what it will become. (Yes, in 2014, someone explaining what e-mail really is!), As clumsy as it may come across, the truth is that I'm one of those folks who signed up of an e-mail account because it was simply 'cool' to have one.
E-mail isn't so bad. It's just went someone labels e-mail as 'cool', like Hotmail (the clues in the name, you just have to have it because it was 'hot'), when you end up thinking
That's what the generation of 95 to 2001 did. Everyone taken care of their e-mail addresses, where they actually were careful handing their e-mail addressed out to someone and making sure they got the right messages. They even send their friends e-cards or e-something to each other, because it was much quicker to do so at the time, compared to letters and telephone.
Unfortunately this level of care, what I'm led to believe in those annoying chain letters, which made threats like closing your e-mail account if you don't send the email to 10 of your friends or someone will die tonight if you don't forward it to your best friend in time and etc because they were your friend and cared about it. That's emotional blackmail at it's finest of it's day and a bit scary thinking about it, considering that there were people who lead that kind of stuff.
It's nice to have an e-mail, maybe just for personal use, finding ways to to litter your e-mail accounts newsletters. Interesting how signing up to other services work to get invoiced and confirmations and all sorts and the whole process is automated. You may aswell sign up too loads of news letters but many companies are taking it, not so easy on that, forcing you to hand over your personal details and having an account with them.
Messages from friends are rare, I like having people around me and sent texts and whatever now mobile phones have text messages and etc, I just think people grow out of email much quicker because the amount of value isn't there compared to everything else and I do think e-mail gets de-valued alot because of e-mail scams, phishing tricks and spam.
How far the email service will go will be beyond me, I just know with all this competition, eventally each service is going to have something unique to sell itself on, just like the 'Sweep' button from Microsoft's services, that they've keep renaming from time to time, which is useful and I use it once in a while and then one day (like in 10 years time, but I'll be surprised if it sooner then I thought it was), maybe one service will start asking for money over e-mail accounts because the value is there. It's rather scary thinking about it that way.
