How AOL Ruined Email

My kids grew up on AOL. It's where they first went online. It's where they learned how to dial up. It's where they learned how to surf the web. It's where they learned how to do email, instant messaging, download, build a homepage, etc, etc.

And it's where they learned to stop using email.

When you are ten years old, you don't get much email. Maybe a message or two per week. When you log in to check your email and you see this it's basically a non starter.

(that is my current AOL inbox but I assure you my kid's mailboxes look pretty much the same)

So they found other ways to communicate where the messages weren't surrounded by spam. Primarily that was/is instant messaging. Then came text messaging. And site messaging. Basically any messaging paradigm where the signal to noise ratio was at least one to one.

My kids check their email at best once a week. And it's a chore. Because its mostly an exercise in deleting spam. Email is for old farts. And they wonder why we use it.

And I blame AOL for that. Not that I think it's a big deal. They get by just fine with other messaging systems, maybe better than I do with email.

But I am sure that AOL is the reason they don't use email and never will.

Comments (36) | Posted September 9, 2006 in Venture Capital and Technology

Comments

Funny how simple a post and much that needed to be said again.

Same goes for hotmail these days by the way - at least for me

Posted by: howard lindzon | Sep 9, 2006 10:33:32 AM

While I think your argument about AOL causing folks to detest email is correct, your idea that your kids "don't use email and never will" completely ignores the fact they'll one day get jobs where they have to interface with old fogeys. This will almost certainly _require_ them to become proficient emailers, move away from inefficient web-based mailing programs, and learn basic email etiquette. I wonder if they'll find it any harder than the generation before them... (probably not).

Posted by: Keith Fahlgren | Sep 9, 2006 10:52:50 AM

I was recently a kid and I'll say the reason I used IM instead of e-mail was more for the intensity of live chat and for the instant gratification of knowing a friend "got the message." Kids have a lot of energy and it's just not fun to wait around for someone to reply!

Posted by: Chris Erbach | Sep 9, 2006 11:19:43 AM

There's a fundamental difference, though, between e-mail and IM. E-mail is asynchronous while IM is synchronous.

You're right in all of the facts - AOL mail is horrid, poor spam filters make e-mail unusable, kids have taken to IM like a fish to water, etc.

But, fundamentally, the next generation will need an asynch communications mode. It might be SMS. They might get back to e-mail (esp. in a corporate setting). But asynch IS the right tool for some jobs.

I am concerned that too much IM multitasking eliminates the ability to concentrate on a task. In our work world, "multitasking" is this wonderful skill - but we're all less productive doing three things then doing one. I don't know if the next generation can handle only doing one thing.

Posted by: Paul | Sep 9, 2006 11:58:33 AM

is it your supposition that IM and the like will always remain free of spam?

maybe its only a matter of time

Posted by: steve | Sep 9, 2006 12:48:32 PM

Having made my way, in the past seven years, from being "a kid" to being "an adult," I will say that you are correct about children using email; namely, they don't. But saying that they "never will" is not correct. When your kids go to college, they will be forced into using email simply to communicate for classes, with teachers, and to other students. And, clearly, when they reach working age they'll need email.

What I've seen is that teenagers make little use of email to communicate amongst themselves, but once they make extensive use of it in college, everyone slowly "jumps on the email train." Eventually they use it socially also. It will happen with your kids too.

Posted by: Jack | Sep 9, 2006 1:01:29 PM

I think this trend is even more widespread than amongst teenagers. I have been surprised (not to mention irritated) when friends of various ages with whom I've been messaging have annnounced (in the event of a file transfer failure) that they won't send it via an email attachment because that's too much effort! This may be a comment on the strength of my friendships but I think it's evidence of a new phenomenon.

Posted by: John Dodds | Sep 9, 2006 3:33:50 PM

the IM and SMS space has already been infiltrated to some degree by spammers. In the SMS however, the carriers are less 'tolerant' of this than the commercial ISP's as they view SMS messaging as a significant avenue for revenue generation.

Posted by: JL | Sep 9, 2006 3:47:20 PM

While I agree that as kids grow up, they'll have to use email at work, I think they'll use it a lot less socially that we do.

My sister and her friends (who graduated undergrad 3 years ago) hardly use email socially. Even with people who live internationally. They use Skype, they use IM, they use SMS globally -- they ignore most email and don't feel the need to reply to most messages. Highly frustrating when you are trying to talk to this group via email. I recently asked my sister why she ignored my emails - she explained she read them, but didn't feel most of them needed a response! Get her on a synchronous comm device and it a completely different story.

That feels like a shift to me.

Posted by: Shri | Sep 9, 2006 4:02:42 PM

Fred, although I agree that the amount of relevant messages in the Inbox is definitely becoming an issue, I do not think that it is fair to blame a company - AOL - for what is inherently a social phenomenon.

Just because AOL popularized electronic mail, it does not imply that they created the tool with the intention of enabling marketers to overload consumers with ineffectual messaging. One could argue that Hotmail, for instance, is as much to "blame" by the same rationale.

Although I am glad that other forms of communication have surfaced to help increase the signal/noise ratio, we should not be so foolish as to think marketers will not leverage this tool in the same way as email. Marketers are well-aware of these emerging platforms and are hard at work trying to invade them. As long as there is an audience to reach, marketers will find a way to leverage social tools to deliver messaging to them.

The good news is that, as the web continues to become more structured, messaging will be more targeted. Consumers will be connected with marketers that seek to reach them because there is a mutual benefit that can be achieved via communication. Messages will no longer be considered SPAM, or advertising, instead messages will be regarded as relevant content.

Only time will tell, I suppose...

Posted by: Hooman Radfar | Sep 9, 2006 4:25:45 PM

I also wouldn't blame the carrier. I don't blame my landline phone company for all the telemarketing calls I receive. I don't blame the post office for the deluge of junk mail I get on a daily basis. Those are worthwhile services. I put the blame where it belongs: on the advertising community. They've taken advantage of those services and use them to stick their mostly crappy products in my face. As Steve rightly points out, there's no reason to believe they aren't working hard to breach those other walls to get their irritating messages to an audience. Not the RIGHT audience. ANY audience. Blame them.

Posted by: csven | Sep 9, 2006 8:23:56 PM

Fred & Friends:
AOL and Hotmail sell their userbases to spammers. Okay, I don't know if they actually do this or not, but if you create a Hotmail account, you will get 10+ spam messages the first day, w/o having even given your address to anyone. I use Yahoo for my personal email account and the only "spam" I get is stuff that I mistakenly signed up for and am too lazy to opt out of. My bulk mail folder gets stuffed with junk, but only 1 or 2 "unsolicited" spam messages touch my inbox per month. I can't speak for anyone else, but I do have multiple Yahoo email accounts and none of them have problems with spam.
-Andrew

Posted by: Andrew Fife | Sep 10, 2006 5:22:40 AM

No doubt AOL trained this generation of teens, and trained them well to use IM, not em. My experience with two daughters, now 14 & 18, illustrates a well established pattern:

AOL stopped being their ISP a few years ago, so they moved to AIM. They added YIM and MSN Msgr, favored by many non-US kids, and then Trillian, which enabled them to run multiple IMs.

Concurrently they began posting constantly on MySpace/Live Journal, etc. As soon as my 18-year-old got her NYU.edu email address, she started using Facebook and stopped using MySpace. The .edu account remains largely empty, while on Facebook she found a roommate, friends, dorm stuff, things to do, etc. months before she moved into her dorm just last week.

Email? What's that? By the time they're in the workforce, they'll be using various IMs and places to post as they do today. Question is whether some new development will supplant email the way email replaced snail mail. Email is becoming the equivalent of snail - reserved only for those occasions where other methods don't do the job, physically or temporally.

Posted by: Bennett Zucker | Sep 10, 2006 9:06:04 AM

You can just as easily blame Outlook. The world had a really bad worm problem about 4 years ago. That's when I switched to webmail for good--no downloading.

I pay for Norada.com for my email since then and it works. It has a good spam filter, I can block domains, etc. Also with Norada you can shift-select and delete blocks of spam without having to click every checkboxes. But now these annoying stock tip emails slip through!

IM has its problems too. For one thing, after what happened recently, it doesn't feel nice that AIM is probably archiving conversations. If they archive searches, why wouldn't they archive IM? But I trust Norada with my email, and there's a secure login.

Another complaint I have heard, in favor of email, is that writing inside a little boxes (like this comments box) is annoying. Some people like to have more space to say what they want to say without an fancy interface/ads crowding them in.

Posted by: PJ | Sep 10, 2006 9:35:20 AM

Nice and simple post! This is also a partial explanation why kids develop tunnel vision when it comes to messages (e.g. ads) they don' t deem relevant. Probably the first generation to not only mistrust but ignore most advertising completely.

Posted by: Christian Busch | Sep 10, 2006 9:37:43 AM

I guess I live I a different world, in that Gmail just abolished my spam problem (which, as an AOL subscriber, I suffered previously exactly as you depict).

Posted by: ZF | Sep 10, 2006 12:36:13 PM

So it sounds like your kids actually figured out how *FIX* email, which had gotten broken a few years before by Outlook, then...?

(Autoquotes, tracking gifs, lack of FROM: validation, attachments, threading, markup, in-page scripting (!), etc -- the defaults chosen in client software a few years ago led directly to the rise in abuse.)

Posted by: John Dowdell | Sep 10, 2006 3:36:44 PM

You reap what you sow. If you have used the same email address for every purchase, free service signup, post it on your blog/profile/comment, use it for beta requests, etc. over a period of 3+ years, you can't avoid the spammers, regardless of your ISP.

If you use the concept of a "junk"/public email address for unsecure sharing, and control your use of your more private address, you won't have the inbox spam issue.

AOL did have a big inbox spam issue 3 years ago, but the teams did a great job in massively reducing the customer spam issue. Can that stop the issue of unsafe email address distribution? Only with draconian rules that will bounce legitimate mail.

As a control, set up a new aim/aol mail account and see the huge difference.

As it related to kids' behavior, it's IM for real-time and profile comments for non-real-time. Email feels like an old school solution. Of course they'll be "forced" to use email in college and work, but maybe we can learn from them to evolve from a binary choice of email vs. IM & comments and find some vertile and sustainable middleground.

Posted by: John McKinley | Sep 10, 2006 5:02:25 PM

John,

If only that were so.

I have never used my aol email address as a primary email address and certainly have never engaged in any of the actions you cite with it.

I've had it for close to 15 years and it hasn't been usable for the past 10 years.

And my kids don't drop their email addresses around the web very much either.

A number of commenters say blame the marketers, but I beleive AOL's lack of attention to the spam issue from 1996 to 2003/2004 was a massive mistake and it has had a meaningful effect on my kids and their friends for sure.

Fred

Posted by: fred | Sep 10, 2006 6:23:42 PM

So... AOL sucks, and always has, yet you keep paying them money every month to partake in thier suckage?

Posted by: Aaron B. Hockley | Sep 10, 2006 6:46:07 PM

Fred - it sounds like you haven't turned your spam filters on. AOL mail users who a) turn their spam filters on, b) use the "Report Spam" button, which helps make the spam filters smarter, report dramatically less spam than users of Hotmail, Yahoo, and other services. I use AOL mail exclusively. I use the Report Spam button whenever a new category of spam hits my book -- mortgages, pharmaceuticals, etc. I get virtually no spam.

Posted by: johnbuckley | Sep 10, 2006 7:53:42 PM

I think email is broken. I wrote a whole post about it a little while ago that might be of interest!

http://www.touchstonelive.com/blog/2006/08/email-sucks-false-positives.html

Posted by: Chris Saad | Sep 10, 2006 8:08:03 PM

I think you are barking up the wrong tree. Yes, kids are using email less in favor of IM and social networking. But blame it on AOL? I think you are riding on the anti-AOL bandwagon to get some publicity. AOL taught many kids in the US how to use email. Spam was a problem for every large ISP, not just AOL. But in recent years, AOL has solved it better than any other.

Posted by: Jake Crandall | Sep 10, 2006 8:19:06 PM

I might have missed something, bu my daughter conducts asynchronous email within Facebook. Email is not dead -- public networked email is dead for students because they live in a controlled universe of friends.

It may have been said above, but may I suggest that Facebook has unconciously delivered on the private network paradigm that popped up as a potential solution for business email but failed for obvious reasons -- you can opt in or prevent others from joining with no really negative consequence in Facebook, But businesses can only really maintain that opt-in model unless they don't want any new customers coming at them via email requests.

Posted by: Pano | Sep 10, 2006 9:14:53 PM

Gmail does a great job of filtering. We can discuss some part of their algo but in the end, whatever they use, results are best in class.

Posted by: Kedar | Sep 11, 2006 12:30:36 AM

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