It’s a long time debate. For years now, I have read here and there that email was about to disappear. More precisely to be replaced by new communication means such as social networks, IM or text messages. But several years later, email is still a key tool and recent studies reveal this may continue for a while…

May 2009. Google announced Google Wave, a new service combining synchronous and asynchronous communications within a unique interface. This innovative approach was supposed to revolutionize and simplify the way we communicate. If a lot of people saw it as an email killer, the project was closed one year later because of a low user adoption.

November 2010. Facebook announced the new Messages, a Google Wave-like app presented by all as a GMail killer. Everybody uses Facebook Messages today but GMail is still here, competing hard with Yahoo! Mail and Windows Live Hotmail.

To better understand the use of email, Microsoft recently asked a market research company to conduct a survey. And the results are quite interesting:

• - 96% said they expect their email communication at work to increase or stay the same.
• - 91% said they expect their email communication at home to increase or stay the same.
• - People now regularly use multiple communication tools aside from email.

This last point is probably the most important. As recently outlined in a Microsoft Research study: “The way that people use communications tools of various kinds helps them distinguish between different types of relationship – between professional connections and between friends, for example, or between close family members and strangers.”.

The key element is here: communication tools don’t get replaced. They complete each other. In the same way that videoconferencing didn’t kill the phone, new tools won’t replace the email but will rather offer other alternatives.

We choose our communication tools depending on our needs. If we commonly use Facebook or text messages for our personal conversations, these don’t seem appropriate in a professional context. Email is one of the essential means of communication between businesses because it’s universal. It works no matter your messaging system, simply, efficiently.

The main issue with email is maybe the difficulty to keep your mailbox organized. But features such as the conversation view, the personal archive or the ability to flag a message should definitely help. For sure, email is still here. And for a while.