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Comment by xiaq | Hacker News Reader

> 2. Replace Email

> This will be done by notifications and direct messaging. Kids these days don't bother with email.

Pg is not talking about personal emails for messaging. Personal messaging is mostly "read, reply, and forget", and you are right that this is now better served by instant messaging protocols (modulo the fact that there is no universal IM protocol).

He is describing work emails, as a "todo list" as he puts it. You get such emails from your colleagues or business partners. They generate work for you and you cannot just reply and forget about them. You need to work a long time (either doing research or the actual work), and get to that email thread later. It is a "shared" todo list, and you send messages to synchronize the state.

Google's Inbox is built exactly for this purpose, although I believe pg wants something more revolutionary.

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Yeah, I know what he's talking about. That use case is exactly how people make use of direct messaging and notifications these days.

Have you recently bought a car through text messaging? Lots of people do that now. They text four or five sales reps at different dealerships, they all run off to do work, then they come back with the best prices and you negotiate entirely through that channel.

Have you recently bought hair extensions through text messaging? Lots of people do that, and entire field sales force are managed and communicated to with text messaging.

Do you work with 25-35yo somethings? Guess how you're getting most of your work instructions these days. It's text messaging.

Have you seen the additional UI/UX changes? Do you know about how a big group of ex-Apple employees rolled off to spin up their own text messaging company that extends the purpose of SMS with additional functionalities that's now more and more common place in-app before we see it roll out to the first party channels.

Email is fax. Tech grows up. Keep up when you can.

In addition to being condescending, most of this is false.

Your examples are bizarre. Buying hair extensions is a tiny niche market to begin with. The percentage of people buying cars from dealers via text message is a rounding error, and I highly doubt that they would have been using email to do it a decade ago, so it's completely irrelevant.

Text messages and similar are fundamentally no different from email except that they have a few limitations that limit their use cases (length, subject lines, attachments, etc). If those limitations are removed...you basically have email again.

I get all my instructions from my manager, product manager, and VP through email. The only time we communicate digitally in non-email ways is to share pictures/diagrams on Slack.

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