Why Social is Better than Email

I was talking with a customer the other day and he asked me if I could write up something short and sweet (obviously he doesn't know me well yet) about the benefits of using social tools over email.  I find the topic coming up quite a bit so I thought I would share with you what I wrote and see what else you have to add.

1. Email is where knowledge goes to die¹.  If I have a question and email the person who I think knows the answer, I may get an answer from that person, but I'm the only person who benefits from the answer.  Odds are that the person who answered the question, being a SME, has to answer the same questions quite frequently.  If, instead of asking the question via email in a 1:1 situation, I ask the question in a community, the same SME can answer the question once, everyone in the community can benefit from the answer at the time, and future community members can benefit from the answer later because the knowledge has been captured and becomes searchable and findable.  In contrast I can't search anyone else's email box.
2. I broaden my scope when I ask a question in a community rather than via email.  I can only know so many people.  So when I ask a question via email I'm limiting myself to potential experts.  Often times the two people I send my email to don't know the answer and so they pass it on to two more people who pass on to the three people who are able to answer my question.  That takes time.  By asking a question in a community I automatically broaden my scope of potential experts and can get a faster, potentially better answer than I would have received via email.
3. Attachments.  How many times have you started iterating on a document someone sent to you via email only to find out it's not the latest version?  By always saving the latest version in the proper community, editing it there, and getting notified of edits via your activity stream you no longer have to worry about multiple version of docs floating around out there.
4. The multiple tree branched email.  Someone starts an email with a long distribution list.  Someone hits reply to all and responds.  Someone else hits reply to all to the original email.  Thus starts the genesis of the multi-branched email thread where you have to track which version of the email you've read and which ones you need to respond to.  By keeping the conversation in a microblog conversation or discussion you keep it single threaded and always know to what you are responding.  Better yet, you get updates in your activity stream so you don't have to check for when there's something new.

 

What else would you add about why social is better than email?  Let's get a Top 10 list going.

_{1This is a quote from Bill French in a 2003 blog post about portal technology and is still one of my favorite quotes.}

Comments

[Mor_trisha]

Great list Christy! You've already captured my favorites:
* Reduce duplicate questions
* Open conversation benefits more people, including future team members
* Content is archived and searchable
* You don't need to know who is an expert when you ask the community
* Edit a common document, rather than merging individual copies
* Eliminate diverging email threads

I would add:
* Subscription model. Community members can subscribe to topics or areas of interest, rather than getting spammed by being on an email distribution list
* Browse content. If I want to see what people are talking about today, I can go browse the latest discussions. I can't do this with email.

Cheers! ~ Trisha

[business consultant]

In sum, social is easier, faster, and more effective. In some cases though, a combination of the two would work great. We've taken social and email opportunities for granted, and your post awakened in me a renewed appreciation.

-Alissa

[Sergey]

Unfortunately, you rarely write in the blog! Write more often, I like you to read!

[Vladimir Tretyakov]

I think there is not only benefits. When you ask a question in a community you don't know who you will answer. Maybe it will be a person incompetent, who claimed to be a professional. Or Chuck Palanik, who was hiding under the name Warren Buffett.
When you write e-mail you know whom you ask a question.