Cultural shift: email vs blogs and wikis

Alan Moore (Communities Dominate Brands) draws our attention to an Interesting report from Information Week

It reports from the Enterprise2.0 Conference in Boston:

"Joe Schueller, who's driving P&G's adoption of new collaboration tools asks: How about e-mail, which Schueller describes as the biggest barrier to employee use of more interactive and effective tools.
"As a sender of an e-mail, I control the agenda of everyone around me," Schueller says. E-mailers decide who has permission to read a message... Blogs, in contrast, beg for comments from those most interested."

Schueller gives us a great example of how the hierarchical and centralised power and information structures of a company have come to prevail in its dominant choice of communication tools.

Email is, essentially, a broadcast tool. It's perhaps why it is losing currency with Generation C - who now show a marked preference for text (shorter and far more immediate - replicating better the dynamics of a live conversation) over email.
Their obvious preference for social media of all kinds derives from a preference for persistent conversation over the 'post-it' note of an email.

What simple and elegant examples of empowerment and emancipation of the network derive from this: Why email when you can blog? Why email when you can join a wiki? Why email when you can text? Why email when you can twitter? Why email when you can post on a Facebook wall?

Email, of course, retains some value for direct one-to-one external broadcast transmissions (ie, I need to get a post-it note on Mr X's screen at Company Y). Its value for internal groups, or social customer interaction is clearly far less.

Perhaps it is simply because of this: Email has the advantage of privacy. The flip side is that it is not the right choice for sharing, collaboration or empowering networks.

That's a lesson for internal communication - and for all those who understand there is a network of power just waiting to upgrade their ideas.

Anyone for a ban on email?